Michael Abels (1962-present)
Global Warming (1990)

Michael Abels has compared himself to a leopard with changing spots, his eclectic style never fitting neatly into one musical genre.

Born on Oct. 8, 1962, in Phoenix, Arizona, Michael Abels remembers laying in his crib, scared to death as he listened to Grieg’s “Hall of the Mountain King” from Peer Gynt. He also remembers at age 3 getting an unofficial music tutorial from The Sound of Music’s “Do Re Mi,” which Abels calls the only lesson in composition a young mind needs. Grieg and “Do Re Mi”—alchemy for musical genius?

Abels spent most of his youth with his grandparents on a small farm in rural South Dakota, where at age 4, he became interested in the piano and began studying with a local teacher. “I was totally fascinated by how music works, what it does,” said Abels. “The fact that you can put these notes together, and they can stir up such emotions, has always been amazing to me.”

One problem: He kept passing out in the farm field. Abels discovered he was suffering from severe allergies to “animals and pollen and, essentially, the Midwest.”

Almost 7 years old, Abels moved back to Phoenix to live with extended family members. He called the move “life-changing.” He felt a need for pavement. And desert. And music—which for him was a fascinating puzzle he could rearrange into any shape desired.

Abels began composing early (age 8), and at just 13, his first completed work was performed. Fascinated by any well-written music, he explored works by Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder, as well as jazz and gospel.

After high school, Abels attended the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, where as a child of mixed-race parents, he could immerse himself in a multicultural urban environment. His neighbors included immigrants from around the world. To further explore his African-American roots, Abels joined a Baptist Church choir and began studying African drumming. He also studied composition, and in 1984, he was named Outstanding Senior among student composers. From 1985-86, he studied West African music at the California Institute for the Arts.

His eclectic style never fit neatly into one musical genre. He compared himself to a leopard with changing spots. While influenced by a wide variety of music, Abels said he has “a definite artistic voice that is my own perspective of the world, a prism through which my ideas are reflected.”

Attracted to worldwide folk music, Abels sought to explore the similarities he heard between music of various cultures. The result is Global Warming, inspired by historic events: the end of the Cold War era, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the resulting improvement (“warming”) in international relations.

The eight-minute genre-crossing and -defying orchestral work, radiant with musical color, may have initially meant one thing, but the work today also connotes a different kind of “global warming,” making the work multilayered.

The opening conjures a bleak, arid desert, but soon transitions to lively Irish and Arabic folk music with Middle Eastern melodies, layered and blended to create a brisk and cheery intersection of culturally disparate yet similar sounds. The work closes as it began—ominously—on a hot, dry, forlorn desert.

Abels described it best: “It begins with a desert scene, a depiction of a futuristic vast desert, with desert locusts buzzing in the background. But soon the piece turns quite uplifting. There are elements of Irish music, African music, Persian rhythms, drones, blended to display their commonalities in a way that is often quite joyous.

“But rather than end happily,” he continued, “the piece suddenly returns to its original, stark, desert scene, leaving it to the listener to decide which version of global warming they prefer. At the time of its premiere, global warming was not the politically charged term it is today. The piece was not written as a political statement, but its political message has inevitably deepened as climate change has evolved from theory into reality.”

After its premiere, Global Warming was featured in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s 1992 African-American Symphony Composers Forum, garnering international attention for the work. It was the first piece by a Black composer to enter the repertory of South Africa’s National Symphony, and it has since received more than 100 performances.

Abels’ repertoire includes “Frederick’s Fables,” music for children; a hip-hop ode to The Watts Tower; explorations of Verdi’s opera tunes; “Dance for Martin’s Dream,” dedicated to Martin Luther King’s legacy; “Tribute,” inspired by the heroes of Sept. 11; American Variations on “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” for trumpet and orchestra, and he has also arranged gospel music for Reverend James Cleveland.

Plus, he wrote the super eerie scores for Jordan Peele’s movies, “Get Out” and “Us.” Wondering if that music had anything to do with hearing “Peer Gynt” as an infant?

Jayce Keane, who began her career as a journalist for The Rocky Mountain News, has been working in the orchestra industry and writing about music for 18 years. A longtime resident of California, she now lives in Colorado.