Multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning composer Michael Daugherty is one of the most commissioned, performed, and recorded composers on today's international concert music scene. His music is rich with cultural allusions and bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring. Known for his ear, his wit, and his imagination of how instruments work together, Daugherty’s music is inspired by American idioms, mythologies, and icons. 

His music, recorded by Naxos over the last two decades, has received six GRAMMY® Awards, including “Best Contemporary Classical Composition” in 2011 for Deus ex Machina for piano and orchestra and Tales of Hemingway for cello and orchestra in 2017.

Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. As a young man, Daugherty studied composition with many of the preeminent composers of the 20th century, including Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Bernard Rands, and Roger Reynolds at Yale (1980-82), Pierre Boulez at IRCAM in Paris, Betsy Jolas at the Paris Conservatory (1979), and György Ligeti in Hamburg (1982-84). Daugherty was also an assistant to jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York (1980-82).

Since 1991, Daugherty has been Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he is a mentor to many of today’s most talented young composers. He is also a frequent guest of professional orchestras, festivals, universities, and conservatories around the world.