Michelle McQuade Dewhirst received the Bachelor of Music in horn performance from Ithaca College and the A.M. and Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Chicago. Her principal composition teachers have been Shulamit Ran, Marta Ptaszynska, Greg Woodward and Dana Wilson. Her music has been performed in numerous university and festival settings including the 2001 Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, the Music97 and Music99 festivals at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and the Midwest Graduate Music Consortium and FUSION 2000 at the University of Chicago. Ensembles that have performed her work include the University of Chicago New Music Ensemble, the Chicago Chamber Music Collective, the Pacifica Quartet and eighth blackbird. Upcoming projects include works sky is falling in, a trio for horn, flute and percussion as well as text settings of two poems by Alice Fulton for soprano, viola and piano. She has taught at the University of Chicago and currently teaches at Concordia University in River Forest, IL and Daley College in Chicago.
