Michael Jude Schiano received his PhD in music theory from Brandeis University, where he studied with Allan Keiler and wrote his dissertation on Arnold Schoenberg's Grundgestalt. For this dissertation he was awarded the AMS-50 fellowship from the American Musicological Society. He received his MM in musical analysis from King's College, University of London, where he studied with Arnold Whittall and wrote a master's thesis on Webern's Das Augenlicht, using analytical computer software of his own design.  

After King's, he studied at The State University of New York at Stony Brook for a year before moving on to Brandeis. His AB degree is in music from Princeton University, where he wrote his bachelor's thesis entitled "Why I Like The Beatles," an unusual topic for an academic paper in 1978. He began his undergraduate career as a physics major however, spending his freshman year at The Cooper Union.
In addition to the teachers mentioned above, he studied music analysis with Jonathan Dunsby, J.K. Randall, and Harold Shapero. His graduate work in musicology was with Robert Marshall, Leo Treitler, Richard Kramer, Edward Nowacki, and Brian Trowell. He is a former lecturer in music at Brandeis University and at The College of the Holy Cross. He has read papers to the AMS, the New England Conference of Music Theorists, and to various colleges on Mozart, Schoenberg, the Beatles, music analysis, American music, popular music and computer applications in music theory and analysis. 

His work appears in The New Grove and College Music Symposium; he recently gave an invited lecture at The Peabody Conservatory, and a keynote address at a 2014 symposium at The University of Maine. He is an accordionist and a pianist, and has performed with the Hartford Symphony (with Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, Ute Lemper, and Jonathan Bayless) and other orchestras in Connecticut. He was also featured as soloist with the Connecticut Virtuosi, performing music by Astor Piazzolla and Handel. He is a member of the Long Island based Beatles Magical Orchestra. He has been a Humanities fellow at the University of Hartford twice, and is a member of the faculty of The President's College.