Michael’s professional activities span conducting, teaching, composing and arranging. His performing repertoire and experience is very broad covering orchestral, choral, operatic, Music Theatre and numerous collaborations with Maori performers.
Michael has been the Wellington Chorus Master and Associate Conductor for the New Zealand Opera from 1991. In 2019 he was the Chorus Master for the company across the country having also previously assumed the role with the Christchurch Chorus.
He has conducted opera performances for the company, including their four national tours for which he produced reduced orchestrations.
He has also conducted operas for Wellington City Opera, Hamilton Operatic Society, Hawke’s Bay Opera, Wanganui Opera, and Massey University’s Conservatorium of Music, the New Zealand School of Music, Boutique Opera and Days Bay Opera.
He is a composer and has works recorded by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
In 2021 and 2022 he has, and will deliver talks on Wagner, to Wagner Societies across the country.
In 2020 Michael received a Lilburn Trust Fellowship to edit and publish a collection of pre-1950 New Zealand Art Songs that has run to three volumes. He has delivered talks on the collection at the National Library, to the 2021 NEWSATZ conference, and at Otago University. The first, ‘The Call of the Huia’ has already been published, the second ‘The Golden Kowhai’ and the 3rd “Song of the Tui” will be published in 2022. A concert of selections from the collection is being toured to Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland by New Zealand Opera in 2022.
