Michael Byron was born in 1953 in Chicago, Illinois. He attended the California Institute of The Arts, where he studied with James Tenney.

He has received grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Dartmouth College, York University, Thomas Buckner, The David and Sylvia Teitelbaum Fund Inc. and private benefactors.

Byron was publisher and editor of the acclaimed anthology series, Pieces, devoted to the increased dissemination of advanced American music. He served on the Board of Directors of the Aesthetic Research Centre of Canada where he edited the first issue of the interdisciplinary Journal of Experimental Aesthetics. He later worked for French publisher E.C. Kerby to edit Varèse’s scores which included Octandre, Intégrales, and Hyperprism.

He is a prolific composer whose music has been performed around the world. His music is often characterized by complexity and multiplicity. It is harmonically rich, rhythmically detailed and meticulously notated. It is also exclusively virtuosic.

Among his collaborators are poet Anne Tardos, Thomas Buckner, Joeseph Kubera, Marilyn Nonken, Lisa Moore, Sarah Cahill, David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, the FLUX quartet, String Noise, the Willian Winant Percussion Ensemble, and The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble.

His music has been released on New World Records, Cold Blue Music, Meridian Records, Poon Village Records, Neutral Records, Tellus, and Koch Records. His scores are available from Frog Peak music.

Byron lives in New York City with his wife, poet Anne Tardos.