Meet Michael
My artistic journey, like many of yours, has included both exhilarating summits and deep, difficult valleys. Yet, in every concert hall and community gathering, I see how our shared experience of music connects us, speaks for us, and affirms us.
For me, creating music is a constant exploration of shared humanity. We have powerful stories to tell, and I’m dedicated to the work of translating that passion into song. What does our future hold? What is the transition we sing about? What joy, sorrow, and celebration can our art capture?
The most urgent questions remain: Can our music subvert the given narrative? Can our song persevere? Can we triumph? I believe the answer lies in the bold, hopeful, resilient voice we build together.
Full Biography
Michael Bussewitz-Quarm is an award-winning composer and conductor based in New York whose choral music frequently engages questions of identity, social justice, violence, belonging, and human connection. Her works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles across the United States and internationally, including the Duke University Chorale, Eugene Concert Choir and Orchestra, The Esoterics, Ithaca College Chorale, musica intima, The Fourth Choir, Women’s Voices Chorus, and numerous commissioning consortia.
Bussewitz-Quarm’s large-scale choral-orchestral work US, commissioned for Sing Democracy 250, has been presented in Signature Concerts at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, Lincoln Center in New York, and DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The Minneapolis performance, recorded with nearly 200 singers and orchestra, is scheduled for broadcast and streaming by PBS on September 25, 2026 as part of PBS America @ 250. Her works have also been heard at Carnegie Hall, where Where We Find Ourselves was conducted by Rodney Wynkoop in 2023, and at the ISCM World New Music Days in Vancouver, where musica intima performed I’ll Fly Away in 2017. Other major works include The Unarmed Child, performed by the Eugene Concert Choir and Orchestra, and Requiem Dies Magna, which Bussewitz-Quarm has conducted with Long Island Voices and Sound Symphony.
Her current major project, This Borrowed Earth: The Rising Forest, is an approximately 30-minute work for chorus and chamber orchestra inspired by Ben Rawlence’s The Treeline. Created in collaboration with lyricist Shantel Sellers, with Rawlence serving as project advisor, the work explores climate change, ecological transformation, and humanity’s relationship with the living world. A national and growing international commissioning consortium is forming for performances in 2028.
In 2021, Bussewitz-Quarm won The American Prize in Composition in the Professional Choral Division, following recognition as a finalist in 2020 and finalist–honorable mention in 2019. That same year, Where We Find Ourselvesreceived support from New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund. Her work has also been presented at conferences of the American Choral Directors Association, and her writing on choral music and social justice has appeared in the Choral Journal. Her music is published by Peermusic Classical, Hal Leonard, and her own Listen Afresh Publishing.
Bussewitz-Quarm developed her compositional voice independently, drawing on extensive training and experience in choral conducting, music education and classical piano. She later participated in the Gregg Smith Singers Composers’ Workshops. Before turning her primary focus to composition, she spent a decade as a public-school choral music educator and held music-director positions in several New York churches. She also founded and conducted Long Island Voices, leading performances with choir and orchestra of works including Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem as well as her own Requiem Dies Magna and The Unarmed Child.
Bussewitz-Quarm holds a B.M. in Music Education from Ithaca College and an M.S. in Music Education from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College.
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Bookings:
To book, contact Michael through email at listenafresh@gmail.com or through Michael’s Contact Page.
