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Michael Zerang

Chicago-based composer, improvisor, percussionist

About Me

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, 1958, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. I am a professional musician, composer, producer, and educator since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms.

As an ensemble member, I have worked in a concentrated fashion with several small and large groups over the years, contributing as a composer and performer, including Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Liof Munimula, Survival Unit III, Brötzmann/McPhee/Kessler/Zerang Quartet, Resonance Ensemble, Friction Brothers, and The Winter Solstice Concerts with Hamid Drake – an annual event in Chicago since 1990.

As an instrumentalist and composer, I have over ninety titles in my discography, and have toured and performed nationally and internationally to 35 countries since 1981. I continue to work with and ever-widening pool of collaborators. I have also collaborated extensively with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms.

I have received a Joseph Jefferson Award for Original Music for Theater in 1996 for Frankenstein, 1998 for The Ballad of Frankie and Johnny, and 2000 for Hunchback – all in collaboration with Chicago’s REDMOON THEATER.

As an arts activist, I have sat on the Board of Directors of several Chicago-based arts organizations including Links Hall, Experimental Sound Studio, Curious Theater Branch, and The Children’s School, as well as in an advisory capacity for The Elastic Arts Foundation.

I founded, and was the artistic director of the Link's Hall Performance Series in Chicago from 1985 -1989 where I produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. I was a Board Member of Links Hall from 1989 - 2013. During this time, Links Hall moved from a small, artist-run volunteer organization, to a vital and long-standing laboratory for experimentation in the performing arts. Links Hall encourages artistic innovation and public engagement by maintaining a facility and providing flexible programming for the research, development and presentation of new work in the performing arts.

I continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at my own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 - 2005. All of these efforts at grass-roots activism yielded expanding opportunities for contemporary local, national and international artists in Chicago, and have added to the vibrant underground culture of the city. All of the concerts I produced at Links Hall and at Candlestick Maker have been documented on audio-tape and are available for scholars, researchers, and the public at the Creative Audio Archive at the Experimental Sound Studios in Chicago.