Michael Alec Rose is a composer of symphonic, chamber, piano, vocal, wind ensemble, theater, and ballet music, including the June 2022 performances of A Million Alien Gospels by Ventana Ballet and Austin Camerata (five sold-out performances).

World-renowned percussionist Ji Hye Jung premiered Rose’s Toccata (for solo vibraphone) in Nashville and Oklahoma City (2022).  A wind quartet, To The Four Winds, appears on a 2021 compact disc of chamber music (Blue Griffin Records).  Dream for Light Years, inspired by the extraordinary paintings of California artist Ali Smith, was composed and recorded for—and aired throughout—a 2020 exhibition of new paintings by Smith at the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery.

In April 2019, Rose’s opera Lolly Willowes premiered at the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston, a production partly funded by the Houston Arts Alliance’s maximum grant of $15,000.

From 2005 to 2016, with London-based violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved Rose co-directed an International Exchange Program between Vanderbilt University and the Royal Academy of Music, London.  The program ignited a two-decade-long collaboration between the composer and the violinist, inspiring more than two dozen new compositions.  Thanks to Peter’s visionary program “Knowledge Exchange Violin” (KEV), Rose has composed works for him to play on site, in various landscapes in England (including Dartmoor and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds sanctuary at Farnham Heath).  Central to KEV’s mission is the celebration of  historic instruments at various institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ashmolean Museum, the Paganini Rooms in Genoa, and the Library of Congress.  The Library is producing a film of Peter performing two pieces by Rose for two great violins in its collection (the Ward Stradivari and the Brookings Amati), in which the violinist and composer are also be interviewed about the collaborative process.

Two CD albums of the Rose/Sheppard Skærved catalogue are available on Toccata Records and Divine Arts Recordings.  Sedimental Education is a recent multi-movement solo violin work, investigating and celebrating the geological richness of Capitol Reef National Park (Utah).

Rose has composed nine works for string quartet, performed by distinguished ensembles at venues including Lincoln Center (Second Quartet, 1988), Tate St. Ives in Cornwall, England (Hubbert Peak: Fifth Quartet, 2007), and the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas (Three Interventions, 2018).

Rose is Professor of Composition at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.  He has received 30 ASCAP awards and numerous commissions, including those from the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, The Spoleto Festival, the Nashville Symphony (twice), Longbow Ensemble of London, the Cassatt Quartet, and the Brazilian Wind Orchestra.  He has won three teaching awards at Vanderbilt, including the Chair of Teaching Excellence.  His book, Audible Signs: Essays from a Musical Ground, was published by Continuum Books (2010).   Rose has frequently appeared as a keynote speaker for One Day University and the Pebble Beach Festival of Authors & Ideas, presenting the connections between Beethoven and the Beatles which epitomize the core principles of Audible Signs.