Biography

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Michael Abels is well known for his genre-defying scores for the Jordan Peele films 'Get Out,' 'Us,' and 'Nope.' The score for 'Us' won a World Soundtrack Award, the Jerry Goldsmith Award, a Critics Choice nomination, multiple critics awards, and was named "Score of the Decade" by The Wrap. Both 'Us' and 'Nope' were shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Original Score, and 'Nope' won Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film at the 2023 Society of Composer and Lyricist Awards.

In 2022, Michael Abels' film music was honored by the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Middleburg Film Festival, and the Museum of the Moving Image. Other recent media projects include the films 'Bad Education,' 'Nightbooks,' the docu-series 'Allen v. Farrow,' 'Breaking' (Sundance 2021), and 'Landscape With Invisible Hand' (Sundance 2022), his second collaboration with director Cory Finley. Most recently, Abels composed, produced, and/or orchestrated all of the on-screen performances for Searchlight's 'Chevalier.' Upcoming projects include Amazon's 'The Burial,' and a series for Disney+.

In 2023, Abels was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for the opera, 'Omar,' co-composed with Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Rhiannon Giddens. The New York Times hailed OMAR as "an ideal of an American sound," and named 'Omar' among the 10 best classical music performances of 2022. Abels' creative output also includes many concert works, including the choral song cycle 'At War With Ourselves' for the Kronos Quartet, and the Grammy-nominated 'Isolation Variation' for Hilary Hahn. Abels' other concert works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and many others. Some of these pieces are available on the Cedille label, including 'Delights and Dances' and 'Winged Creatures.' Recent commissions include 'Emerge' for the National Symphony and Detroit Symphony, and a guitar concerto 'Borders' for Grammy-nominated artist Mak Grgic.

Abels is co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an advocacy group to increase visibility of composers of color in film, gaming and streaming media.
- IMDb mini biography by: Michael Abels

Graduated from USC Los Angeles Thornton School of Music.