Michael Standard

Michael Standard is an American composer, arranger, and percussionist living in Tampa, FL. His compositions for solo performers, chamber groups, and scholastic ensembles have been performed throughout the United States and internationally, and his work engages with a wide breadth of styles and concepts. Performers of Michael’s compositions and arrangements include the Atlantic Brass Quintet, Shawn Mativetsky and the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Eric Hawkins and the McCormick Percussion Group, Michael Skillern, and many school ensembles in the United States, Canada, China, and Malaysia. His mentors in composition include Baljinder Sekhon, Paul Reller, Robert Scott Thompson, and Nickitas Demos.

Michael maintains an active performance career as a percussionist. A passionate advocate for diverse voices in music, he has performed and presented the music of Tawnie Olson, Robert Morris, Jennifer Bellor, Steve Reich, Sohyun Lim, and many others. His performance on David Liptak’s recently-released CD Constellations alongside Eunmi Ko was lauded by Fanfare magazine. He has performed in concert in his native Georgia, Florida, in New York at the Mostly Modern Festival, the Sō Percussion Summer Institute at Princeton University, and internationally in Austria. In his current hometown of Tampa, Michael co-founded the Tampa Homegrown new music series to perform the works of composers connected to this city. He performs regularly with the Tampa Brass Band, and he has also performed for Terroir New Music series. His mentors in performance include Robert McCormick, Stuart Gerber, Charles Settle, and Matt Ward.

Michael serves on the faculty of the University of Tampa, where he directs the Interactive Arts Ensemble and teaches private lessons in Contemporary Technology. As part of his personal mission to empower students to engage with art-making, Michael founded FORGE Tampa Bay, a free composition seminar for Hillsborough County high school students. He also enjoys teaching percussion at Berkeley Preparatory School.