Michael Berkowski is a composer of electroacoustic and computer music, active in the Minneapolis, MN area. In May 2004, Mr. Berkowski completed a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition at the University of Minnesota School of Music, where he served as a teaching assistant for courses related to computer music and music technology. While at the Univ. of Minnesota, Michael was a composition student of Dr. Alex Lubet, and Dr. Douglas Geers.

As a composer, Mr. Berkowski's primary concern is the manipulation of listeners' perceptions of the passage of time. This may be achieved by setting up musical environments in which they may detach themselves from sonic events that formally define a work and shift focus instead toward spatial and timbral aspects of the music.

Although he mainly composes electroacousic works directly to recorded media, he also performs live with electronic devices and computers, and designs computer music installations. Mr. Berkowski was awarded a research fellowship from the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts for a summer 2003 research and composition project invloving the design of wearable devices to be used for control of parameters in music synthesis. More information on these and other projects may be found on the RESEARCH area of this website.

Mr. Berkowski holds a Bachelor of Music degree in music composition from the University of Dayton, where he studied compostion under Dr. Phillip Magnuson and oboe under Christopher Philpotts and Mark Twehues. While in Dayton, he was active as a freelance performer and oboe teacher, as well as an adjunct instructor of music theory at Stivers High School for the Arts.