Michael Senturia

Michael Senturia was born in Washington D.C. in 1937. In 1959, he joined the Harvard music faculty as a theory instructor in the department and conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra. From 1962 until his retirement in 1992 he was on the music faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, rising from Instructor to Full Professor, directing the University Symphony and teaching theory, conducting and music literature in the Department of Music. During this period Mr. Senturia was thrice invited to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China to teach Western contemporary music to their graduate conducting students. While at the university, he founded and for fifteen years directed The Young Musicians Program of the University of California, a community outreach program of scholarship music instruction for talented, low-income secondary school students from the Bay Area.

Since his retirement, Mr. Senturia has written instrumental music for wind and string groups and vocal music for his classical a cappella group "Coro D'Amici." Petra, completed in September 2008, was given its premiere by the Contra Costa Chamber Orchestra under Tim Smith in February 2009 and has been performed by the Mission Chamber Orchestra of San Jose and the University of Illinois Chamber Orchestra. The Symphonic Band at UC Berkeley, which premiered Mr. Senturia's Divertimento in 2008, premiered his newest composition for symphonic wind ensemble, Impressions for Band, in Spring, 2011. Mr. Senturia makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area.