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Michael Orland

MICHAEL SETH ORLAND appears often in the Bay Area in performances of chamber music, and has performed with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Empyrean Ensemble, Earplay, and Other Minds; in bygone days, he played with New Music Theater and in the San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music series.

Venturing further from home, Orland has played in the Gund Series at Kenyon College in Ohio and in new-music festivals at Cal Arts (LA) and in Buffalo, N.Y. He performed duo-piano music at April in Santa Cruz and the Mendocino Music Festival, and can be heard on recordings of contemporary music released by Centaur, Albany, and others. He has performed for composers such as John Cage, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curren, and Morton Subotnick, and has played chamber works with members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the L.A. Philharmonic, the S.F. Symphony, the S.F. Opera, and many other ensembles.

Orland studied piano with Margaret Kohn in Claremont, CA, and is a graduate of the UC Berkeley Music Department, where he studied harpsichord with Davitt Moroney and Laurette Goldberg, and composition with Gérard Grisey. He later continued studying composition and analysis with David Sheinfeld, and studied voice with Lillian Loran.

In addition to appearing as a freelance symphony musician, Orland has performed many times with professional and student vocalists, as well as in vocal master classes given on the UC Berkeley campus by Frederica von Stade and Sanford Sylvan. He also has played piano concertos with the UC Symphonies of Berkeley and Davis, and teaches at both campuses.