Michael Thomas Berkley is a composer, producer, performer, and audio engineer. His music, which is entirely instrumental, is best described as dramatic world ambient music, bridging contemporary classical, world, trance, and organic ambient music.
While Berkley has spent most of his life studying European classical music, his own music has been most significantly influenced by his travels to Africa. In the spring of 1994, he traveled to Zimbabwe where he conducted independent ethnomusicology field work in a remote village. His ground-breaking field research culminated in a self-authored article. Upon returning to the United States, he received a grant from ASCAP for excellence in composition. In May of 1995, he graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont with highest honors in music composition. Immediately following his graduation, he was accepted into the Center for Compositional Studies at the Aspen Music Festival. Now a member of the National Association of Composers (USA) and the American Music Center, Berkley is currently composing and recording at his San Francisco studio.
Essential recordings:
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