A downpour inside of a cathedral. Air through the eyes. Helicopters taking off from necks.

Mike Vernusky creates electronic music & sound art that disintegrates boundaries of technology, space, and culture. He is also an avid field recordist, recording deep in the Amazon rainforest to the snake charmers of Marrakech; from the bushveld of South Africa to the beautiful cacophony that is India.

Vernusky’s music has been described as “brash” (New York Times), “isolationist” (The Wire),  “especially otherworldly” (New Music USA), “strange & intriguing” (Exclaim), and “étonnante” (EtherReal France). As an emerging composer, he received the Grand Prize in Music at the Digital Art Awards from Keio University in Japan, and was awarded the MATA Commission.

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Vernusky has presented his music and ideas at Shanghai Conservatory, Institut Français Tokyo, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Harvard University, Alte Schmiede Vienna, and University of Huddersfield, UK. His music is published on BBC Audio, MIT Press, The Wire, Ferns Recordings (FR), Audiobulb (UK), Quiet Design, and several others.

Mike lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, percussionist & figure skater Carolyn Trowbridge and their two wild monkeys. After 16 years of living a double life as an independent artist and Experience Analyst for Apple, he is now a freelance composer for mixed media.

Vernusky's music has featured in FILE & FIME São Paulo, Sonic Mmabolela South Africa, Marrakech Biennale, Experimental Intermedia, Art Basel Miami, and the Valdez Theatre Conference in Alaska. He is supported by Music at the Anthology, El Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras, MetLife Creative Connections, and ASCAP.

Mike is a tireless archivist of eccentric analog audio recordings, amassing a near-chimeric collection of highly obscure vinyl, lacquer, flexidisc, and instantaneous recordings from around the world. Using a variety of turntables, he traverses the possibilities of found sound as metaphor and reimagines spectral spaces through the unconventional use of audio technologies. These sonic artifacts often find their way into his compositions, primarily through his ever-expanding hauntological found sound work, The Holy Sea, a home listening experience now over 24-hours long.

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Holding grad and undergrad degrees in composition and classical guitar from The University of Texas at Austin and Mercyhurst University, respectively, his former mentors and teachers include William Duckworth, Denis Smalley, Francisco López, Kevin Puts, and Albert Glinsky, among others. During the pandemic, Vernusky studied Indian classical voice technique with La Monte Young.

Vernusky thrives on collaborating with artists in a variety of disciplines such as film, dance, theatre, photography and graphic design. He has ongoing projects with playwright Greg Romero, filmmaker Daniel Maldonado, visual artist Noopur Choksi, and photographer James David Smith, among others. Vernusky is also a proud alum of the WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory in Baltimore, where he worked alongside directors, actors, dramaturgs, playwrights, mathematicians, behavioral scientists, and improv artists.

Vernusky recently returned from the Ecuadorian Amazon with Gordon Hempton. A new album will be released in 2025.