bio

Michael Gancz ​(b. 1999) earned their MA and BA from Yale University, summa cum laude, PBK, and with distinction in the major, in 2022. In 2023, as a BAEF research fellow, they earned a diploma cum laude from the Royal Carillon School “Jef Denyn” in Mechelen, Belgium. They now work as a research associate with the Mark Gerstein laboratory, where they design and optimize machine-learning tools to analyze culture, creative expression, and the brain. They also produce, compose, and design music and audio for video games, short films, installations, concerts, and web media.

Gancz’s research interests center on sound spatialization and immersive interactive design, MIR and ML-assisted music and audition analysis, neurologic music therapy, and ludic/interactive musical architecture. They hold a strong complementary interest in building tools for DEI advocacy and community service, and have worked with nonprofits like Hear Your Song to help empower communities through music. As part of their Master’s thesis project, Gancz designed and built an ambisonic (3D sound) array at Yale’s Blended Reality Laboratory. They have presented their work at several conferences, and have authored or coauthored articles in Science, The Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, and Beiaard en Klokkenkultur in de Lage Landen.

Gancz’s award-winning concert compositions have been featured by ASCAP and at festivals including the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, SICPP, the Ostrava Days Festival, the SONUS Foundation Let A Master Pitch In program, the GCNA Congress, and the Off the Beaten Path series. Gancz is an alumnus of the NYU Steinhardt Video Game Scoring Workshop and a finalist of the Noteflight Video Game Scoring Contest. They have studied under Kathryn Alexander and Konrad Kaczmarek, and done additional work with Trevor Bača, David Lang, Christopher Theofanidis, and Steve Shapiro.

Gancz wears many hats as a performer and studio musician: they have conducted several ensembles including the Davenport Pops Orchestra, toured Europe and the US as a carillonist, played trombone at Lincoln Center, and gigged on keys for a number of bands in the DC and New Haven areas. They are also the cofounder of the trombone choir Scale & Bones, and the sole mortal vessel for the eldritch trombone EDM entity known only as BONEGOD.

Gancz frequently collaborates with artists, poets, programmers and filmmakers to create works that transcend the boundaries of genre and medium. Gancz’s multimodal work has appeared online, on billboards in Times Square, and at the All Nighter, a festival they founded in 2018 to help promote independent, strange, and ill-defined works of art and performance. They are always looking for new collaborators, and would be delighted to work with you on your next project!

In their time away from work, Gancz is a dedicated amateur video game developer, origami artist, and recreational mathematician, as well as a proud auncle of 3 cats and a dog that thinks she’s a cat.