Born in Charleston, SC in 1974, Nathan Michel is composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist making all kinds of music, from pop to experimental to classical. My band, Hospitality, has released two full-length albums on Merge Records and toured world-wide. Our debut album was named one of the top 50 records of 2012 by Rolling Stone. I've also released four solo recordings of experimental electro-acoustic pop music on the labels Sonig, Tigerbeat6 and Tomlab. Pitchfork called my music "daring, but highly listenable".
A classically trained composer, I received a Ph.D. in composition from Princeton and also studied at Yale, The Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands (with Louis Andriessen) and Bowdoin. I'm very interested in the creative process and wrote my dissertation on control and spontaneity in the work of Morton Feldman, Frank Zappa and Lars von Trier.
I've received numerous awards for my music, including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Naumburg Scholarship from Princeton and several Morton Gould Young composer awards from ASCAP. My work was recently featured on NPR's Performance Today.
Since 2008 I've worked as a freelance composer writing music for film and TV ads, including national spots for Nike, Nokia, Barclays, GE and many more.
