Michael Abels
Biographical Information
Summary:
If you have seen the films Get Out or Us, you have already experienced some of Michael Abels’ music. Michael Abels is a renowned living composer. He has an impressive career, both in the concert hall and the world of film music. His soundtracks for Nope, and Us were both short listed for the Oscar for Best Original Score. And excitingly, he would win the Jerry Goldsmith Award and a World Soundtrack Award for his music in Us. Abels’ career in the concert hall has also brought him international acclaim. He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2023. And he has also worked with major orchestras like the New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Chicago Symphony, and National Symphony; to name a few.
Early Life and Origins:
Michael Abels was born in Arizona, but he would grow up in rural South Dakota. He started taking piano lessons when he was very young, and he began composing music when he was only 8 years old. Michael Abels is biracial, and he has talked about his evolving relationship with this identity. In one interview on the Today show, Abels talked about how he was raised by the white side of his family and how he didn’t have many direct links with the Black side of his identity growing up. Once he was in college, he began to explore his Black identity with music, something that he was comfortable with. In the same interview, he would say, “I was very used to being the darkest face in the room, but I was not as comfortable being the lightest face in the room. I had to learn how to do that.” Michael Abels would move to Los Angeles to study music and composition at the University of Southern California (USC). He would thrive there, and he would be named an Outstanding Senior thanks to one of his compositions. After graduating from USC, he would study Western African music at the Californian Arts Institute.
Career:
Michael Abels’ career as a composer started to take off in the 1990’s. One of his works, Global Warming, was performed by the National Symphony of South Africa shortly after Nelson Mandela became president. It was one of the first pieces by a Black composer that the symphony performed. His career and reputation would continue to grow in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. He composed 8 pieces in the first decade of the 2000’s, including well known works like Tribute (2001) and Delights and Dances (2007). The 2010’s would be a transformative decade for Abels. He would continue to compose orchestral works like Winged Creatures (2018). But he was also hired to compose the soundtrack for Get Out, a movie that garnered worldwide attention.
Critics argue that Get Out redefined the genre of horror. Similarly, critics have described Michael Abels’ musical style as genre bending. Abels described his soundtrack as “gospel horror.” And it was so well received, that he was asked to compose the soundtracks for Us, Nope, Bad Education, and many other movies and shows. This brings us to the current day, and the current Michael Abels: a composer at a high point in his career. His opera, Omar, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2023. And he was chosen to be a 2023 Featured Composer at the prestigious Ojai Festival. Michael Abels is also a co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an organization that aims to increase the visibility of composers of color in film, gaming, and streaming media.
Sources:
Michael Abels Website:
https://michaelabels.com/about/
Kennedy Center Bio:
https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/a/aa-an/michael-abels/
IMDb Bio:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8752173/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Today Show Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH-Q1hJZNt4
