Michèle Bokanowski (born 1943 in Cannes, France) is a French Paris-based electroacoustic music composer. Passionate about music from childhood, it wasn't until later, at the age of 22, after reading
À la recherche d'une musique concrète by
Pierre Schaeffer, that Michèle Bokanowski decided to study composition. After classical training in harmony, she met Michel Puig, a pupil of René Leibowitz, who taught her writing and analysis upon Schönberg Theory. In 1970, she began a two-year internship at the Research Department of the ORTF under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer. Between 1973 and 1975, she took part in a research group on sound synthesis, studied computer music at the University of Vincennes as well as electronic music with
Éliane Radigue. She mainly composes for concert and for cinema (music for Patrick Bokanowski's short films and for his feature films
L'Ange and
Un Rêve solaire). She has also composed for television, theatre and dance. In her music, often infused with a mysterious atmosphere, she uses evocative and poetic concrete sounds, with a mastery of looping and feedback techniques and with an art of cinematic editing.
