Michael Dessen is a composer-improviser who performs on the slide trombone and computer. Drawing on experience across a wide range of contemporary forms, he creates his own unique blend of music and collaborates with some of today's most exciting innovators.
In the Michael Dessen Trio, he performs on trombone and laptop, along with Tyshawn Sorey on drums and Christopher Tordini on bass. Clean Feed Records released the trio's 2008 album, Between Shadow and Space, following Dessen's 2007 leader debut on Circumvention Music, Lineal, which featured Mark Dresser, Susie Ibarra, Vijay Iyer, Terry Jenoure and others performing his acoustic compositions.
Dessen is also a member of Cosmologic, a longstanding collective quartet whose fourth album of original music has just been released by Cuneiform Records. Since the mid-1990s, Dessen has also collaborated regularly on projects exploring interactive technology and, more recently, telematic (distance/internet) performance. He is currently completing a solo album of trombone and live electronics.
Dessen's own writing about music includes articles in The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation and Communities in Dialogue (Wesleyan University Press), the online journal Critical Studies in Improvisation / Etudes Critique en Improvisation, and Musicworks magazine, as well as a Preface to Yusef Lateef's Songbook. His scholarship focuses especially on the role of African American traditions within late-twentieth century experimental music worlds.
In addition to studies with Yusef Lateef, George Lewis and Anthony Davis, and collaborations and mentorships with other renowned composer-improvisers, Dessen also spent many years freelancing in diverse contexts, from avant-garde new music ensembles to salsa bands. He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of California, San Diego, where he received a Ph.D. in Critical Studies and Experimental Practices from the Music Department. Equally important, Dessen has been schooled by numerous musicians outside of academia.
He currently teaches at the University of California, Irvine, where he is on the core faculty of an innovative new graduate music program in Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology.