A French composer born in 1949 in Paris.
Since being the pupil of, notably, Olivier Messiaen, Vlado Perlemuter and Yvonne Loriod, Michaël Levinas has pursued a career as both composer and pianist. In 1974 he co-founded the ensemble Itinéraire.
Attached to the spectral movement, his output has always sought to examine the domain of tone-colour and acoustics, though it has also tackled the fundamental question of the text/music relationship. His works include Arsis and Thesis (1971), Concerto pour un piano espace (1976), Voix dans un vaisseau d'airain (1977), Ouverture pour une fête étrange (1979), Les rires du Gilles (1981), La conférence des oiseaux (1985), Voûtes (1988), Rebonds (1993), the operas Go-gol (premiered in 1996 at the festival Musica), Les nègres (premiered in 2004 at Lyons Opera) and Le petit Prince (premiered in 2014 at Lausanne Opera), as well as his oratorio La passion selon Marc, une passion après Auschwitz (2016).
A teacher of analysis at the Paris Conservatory since 1987, Michaël Levinas was elected to the Académie des Beaux-arts in 2009. In 2017, he receives the President of the Republic's Prize from the Charles Cros Academy.
