Sarah Michael received her Bachelor of Music degree in music history from San Francisco State University in 1976, and her M.A. in Composition from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1994.
During the 1970s she was an active performer of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music on the viola da gamba and other historical stringed instruments in the San Francisco Bay Area.
During the 1980s, she had a career as a computer programmer, project manager, and manager-of-project-managers. In 1990 she retired from her programming (then management) career, returned to school to work on an MA in composition, and became active as a composer.
Ms. Michael created several works to accompany modern dance, and has worked with a number of choreographers in the Bay Area. She served as composer in residence for the Moving Arts Dance Collective of Walnut Creek, CA from 1998 to 2002, and during that time collaborated with choreographer Anandha Ray to create scores for dance in a variety of media. "Light's Edge" was a symphonic work which was performed by Moving Arts with the Diablo Symphony, a community orchestra. "Maestitia" is a study for two sopranos and live electronic processing. In this unusual piece the singers also dance, and all the sounds are produced live and processed in real time. The score for "Temporal Landscapes," a very popular Moving Arts repertoire piece commenting on our attitude toward waste, is electroacoustic, is based on vocal sounds, marimba, and samples of fencing foils. (Fencing with the saber was a hobby of Ms. Michael’s, and she competed nationally in the Veteran class.)
Her interest in vocal music extended to opera, and her first chamber opera, "The Sealwoman," premiered in June 1996 in a collaborative production by the Berkeley Lyric Opera and Zigzag Theatre of Oakland, CA. Her second chamber opera, "Arachne," received a concert performance in April 2000 and was staged by Goat Hall Productions of San Francisco in the spring of 2002.
She has had several large ensemble works performed. "The Year-Wheel" was premiered by the Oakland East Bay Symphony under conductor Michael Morgan. "Anthem," for chorus and band, was commissioned and premiered by the Contra Costa Children's Chorus and the Contra Costa Wind Symphony.
In the last several years she has devoted her time to the study of the Arabic music, playing quarter-tone accordion and qanun. She has studied with accordionist Elias Lammam and qanun player Jamal Sinno. She performed with various ensembles including Aleph Null, a Persian-jazz fusion band, and Aswat, a community chorus and orchestra that performs Arabic music, Al Azifoon, and Flowers of the Nile.