Photo by Carolyne Loreé Teston

CHANTAL MICHELLE

Chantal Michelle is a composer and interdisciplinary artist whose work engages with the spatial and tactile properties of sound. Her practice incorporates feedback systems, multichannel compositions, and psychoacoustic phenomena to explore the relationship between sound, perception, and physical space. She is interested in the mutability of perception and its capacity to be disrupted or reconstructed. Her projects span site-responsive installations, hand-blown glass instruments, conceptual scores, and recorded works.

All Things Might Spill, Michelle’s first album for Shelter Press (2026), is an examination of sustained tension and the mystifying experience of time dilation in the moments just before a rupture or collapse. The music inhabits a space of instability, and even as it uses continuous tones and defined melodic phrases, there’s an air of irresolution—like a moment of unease suspended indefinitely.

Unit of Heart, Michelle’s second album of 2026, presents two interrelated pieces that highlight diverging compositional modes. Here she brings in two key collaborators: Patrick Shiroishi, who contributes flutes and saxophones throughout, and poet Funto Omojola, whose words and voice bookend the title composition. Both compositions unfold gradually, but where the album’s a-side “Sudden Oceans” presents a minimal tonal palette focused entirely on the subtle grain of wind instruments, “Unit of Heart” proceeds linearly, moving through passages of synthesizer, environmental recordings, and full-cheeked wails of saxophone. Both encourage a state of focused listening as the scope of the music deepens and widens.

Her work and collaborations have been presented internationally at institutions and festivals including The Museum of Modern Art (US), the Royal Academy of Arts (UK), WeSA Seoul (KR), MUTEK (MX), Fridman Gallery (US), and Café OTO (UK). Her discography includes releases on Shelter Press, Dinzu Artefacts, Superpang, and Somewhere Press.

Michelle was awarded the 2026 Villa Aurora Artist Grant and the 2025 Arbeitsstipendium Ernste Musik und Klangkunst from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture, and was selected for the 2026 GMEA residency in Albi, France. Her work has also been supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (US), the Sonic Arts Research Unit (UK), and the Feminist Center for Creative Work (US). She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.