Biography

Michael K. Slayton is an American composer and educator, currently serving as Associate Professor of Composition & Theory at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

Slayton has composed works in a cross-section of musical genres, with specific emphasis on chamber music. His continuing dedication to the value of artistic exchange has afforded him opportunity to write for distinguished performers all over the world. His music, published by ACA, Inc. (BMI), is regularly programmed in the U.S. and abroad, including Chemnitz, Seitz, Leipzig, Droyssig, and Weimar, Germany; Graz, Austria; Paris,Tours, and Marquette-lez-Lille, France; Kristiansund, Norway; Aviero, Portugal; Brussles, Belgium; Johannesburg and Potchefstroom, South Africa; London, UK; and New York, NY.

Recent works include Kleemation (2016), commissioned by oboist Jared Hauser; Dreamers’ Meadows (2015), commissioned by The Atlantic Ensemble; Mirórs (2013); Meditation and Reflections, for viola (2012), commissioned by violist Christian Liberty Marshall; Fifth Prelude for Orchestra (2011), commissioned by Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra (Marcello Bussiki, director); Sursum (2010), commissioned by the Kreutzer Quartet, London; and A Hideous Veil (2010), commissioned by Blair Percussion Vortex (Michael Holland, director).

Since moving to Nashville in 1999, Slayton has received numerous commissions for choral, solo, orchestral and chamber works, including two pieces for the Nashville Ballet. During his M.M. and D.M.A. studies at the Moore’s School of Music (Houston, TX), Slayton was under the tutelage of composers Michael Horvit (see here also) and David Ashley White, and distinguished musicologist and author Howard Pollack.

Slayton is author/editor-in-chief of Women of Influence in Contemporary Music (Scarecrow Press, 2011), a book detailing the lives and music of several of America’s notable women in composition, including Elizabeth R. Austin, Susan Botti, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, Tania León, Cindy McTee, Marga Richter, Judith Shatin. For more information, click here.

A member of the American Composer’s Alliance, Society of Composers, Inc., the College Music Society, Connecticut Composers, Inc., and Broadcast Music, Inc., Michael Slayton continues to be an active participant in the national and international music community.