Michael Hersch, a distinguished American composer and pianist, was born on June 25, 1971, in Washington D.C. He is recognized as one of the most talented composers of his generation. Recent highlights in his career include the premiere of his Violin Concerto at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and the Avanti Festival in Helsinki. Additionally, his monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter, has seen new productions in Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C. His work, I hope we get a chance to visit soon, was featured at both the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals, where he was a highlighted composer in 2018.

In 2019, Hersch unveiled his ambitious 11-hour chamber cycle, sew me into a shroud of leaves, at the Wien Modern Festival, a project he dedicated fifteen years to. The 2020/21 season will witness the premiere of his new opera, Poppaea, in Vienna and Basel as part of the Wien Modern Festival, in collaboration with ZeitRäume Basel and Gare du Nord Basel / Netzwerk zur Entwicklung formatübergreifende Musiktheaterformen. For the 2019/20 season, he was appointed Composer-in-Residence with the Camerata Bern, and in February 2020, his recent piece Agatha was performed in both Bern and Geneva.

Over the years, Hersch has composed new works for various ensembles, including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Klang, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Alban Berg Ensemble Wien, and the Library of Congress. Noteworthy recent performances include the Kreutzer Quartet's European presentations of Images from a Closed Ward in the U.K. and Sweden, alongside a recording of this piece by the acclaimed FLUX Quartet. He also composed a solo violin work for the New York Philharmonic, which premiered at the orchestra’s Biennial in 2014.

In October 2022, Hersch collaborated closely with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who commissioned both his Violin Concerto, which debuted in 2015, and the chamber work ... das Rückgrat berstend, premiered at New York City's Park Avenue Armory in autumn 2017. Kopatchinskaja recently performed one of the solo roles in the world premiere of Agatha in Bern. Previous significant performances include Night Pieces, commissioned and premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra, and the song cycle Domicilium, commissioned and premiered by Thomas Hampson and Wolfgang Rieger at San Francisco Performances. Hersch's second piano concerto, along the ravines, has been performed by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, as well as at the George Enescu International Festival in Romania.

His piece end stages was commissioned and premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, while Zwischen Leben und Tod recently had its European premiere. A Forest of Attics, commissioned for the Network for New Music’s 25th anniversary season, was recognized as one of the year's most significant classical music events by The Philadelphia Inquirer, which remarked, “A Forest of Attics threw a Molotov cocktail into the concert: Everything before it paled in comparison ... Hersch has written some towering works in recent years; this is yet another.”

As a pianist, Hersch is noted for his remarkable skill at the keyboard, having performed globally at notable venues including the Ojai Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Festival Dag in de Branding in the Netherlands, Warhol Museum, Romaeuropa Festival, Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., Cleveland’s Reinberger Chamber Hall, Festival of Contemporary Music Nuova Consonanza, Network for New Music Concert Series, Left Bank Concert Society, Festa Europea della Musica, St. Louis’ Sheldon Concert Hall, and in New York City at Merkin Concert Hall, the 92nd St. Y - Tisch Center for the Performing Arts, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, among others.

Hersch gained international recognition at the age of twenty-five when he received First Prize in the Concordia American Composers Awards, leading to the performance of his Elegy, conducted by Marin Alsop at Alice Tully Hall in New York. That same year, he became one of the youngest recipients of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition. He has also been honored with the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the President’s Frontier Award from Johns Hopkins University, among other accolades.