Researching Michael Coyle

Michael Patrick Coyle is a composer/arranger in Minneapolis and also the executive producer for an independent, multi-media production company based in New York, Munich, and Warsaw.. He is the former composer-in-residence for the Manhattan Performance Group and the Cottage Theater in New York City, and was the editor of Stagebill magazine at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Michael's works have been featured on television, film, and stage, and in art installations in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, and Minneapolis, and Madison, WI.

He works in a wide variety of styles, but primarily enjoys writing for instrumental chamber ensembles and orchestra. Most evident in Michael's music is a rich use of both traditional and extended harmony balanced with sections of harmonic ambiguity and atonality. He believes that the combination of tonality and atonality is critical to the appreciation of both. By his own admission, he is obsessed with novel variation in both tone color and texture. He has been recognized as an adept and imaginative orchestrator. He works with both acoustic and electronic instruments in order to have access to as wide a palette of raw sound as possible.

In addition to music, Michael has an avid interest in science and material experimentation and in the mid-1980s accepted a position as Production Manager for McHugh-Rollins Associates, a properties and special effects design firm in New York City. While in that position he oversaw the special effects production of such large Broadway shows as The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables and implemented the effects for Ingmar Bergman's production of Hamlet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as well as many other stage productions and films.

Michael did his undergraduate studies at the Eastman School of Music, graduate work at the New England Conservatory of Music, the Institute of Audio Research, New York University, and the University of Minnesota. Michael plays the piano, trombone, and a wide variety of electronic instruments. His greatest musical influences and mentors have been: Robert Bailey, James Hepokoski, Daniel Pinkham, Jan Gorbaty, Dominic Argento, and Henry Schmidt.

Michael currently resides in Minneapolis, where, in addition to his work as a composer and arranger, he occasionally performs on the piano and trombone.

Michael is an active member of the American Composers Forum.

Born in Dungiven, Coyle attended St Columb's College in Derry and the Belfast College of Technology. He worked as a telephone engineer for British Telecom and in 1993 was co-opted on to Limavady Borough Council as a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) representative.

In 1996 he was an unsuccessful candidate in the Northern Ireland Forum election in East Londonderry. Following the resignation of Northern Ireland Assembly member Arthur Doherty on 1 September 2002, Coyle was co-opted on to the body, representing East Londonderry. He stood in the constituency in the 2003 Assembly election, but was not elected.