Michael Charles Colgrass (April 22, 1932 – July 2, 2019) was an American and Canadian musician, composer, and educator.
He graduated from the University of Illinois (1954) with a degree in percussion performance and composition, including studies with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Festival and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood.
Colgrass spent eleven years supporting his composition activities as a free-lance percussionist in the city of New York, where his performance experiences included such varied groups as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, The Metropolitan Opera, Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Recording Orchestra's Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky series, and numerous ballet, opera, and jazz ensembles.
Colgrass received commissions from the New York Philharmonic and The Boston Symphony (twice), as well as the orchestras of Minnesota, Detroit, San Francisco, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Washington, Toronto (twice), the National Arts Centre Orchestra (twice), The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Manhattan and Muir String Quartets, the Brighton Festival in England, the Fromm and Ford Foundations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and numerous other orchestras, chamber groups, choral groups, and soloists.
The Colgrass family decided to relocate to Toronto in 1970 primarily because of street crime, labor strikes, and civil chaos then rampant in the city of New York, an urban quality-of-life crisis that reached its peak under Mayor John Vliet Lindsay.
"Crime was at its apex at the time in New York and Ulla and I were wondering where to live," Colgrass later told a Toronto journalist.
[4] Colgrass won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his symphonic piece Déjà vu, which was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic.