His compositional work is concentrated in the field of composing with genres and styles. He sees this not only as a logical outcome of our times, but as an area that allows for a personalized creativity enriched by mental and cultural tools of craft and expression from any historical and cultural model.

Michael has focused much of his creativity on developing new repertoire and a new style for classical guitar. Performing on an Allan Bull 7 string classical, Michael Knopf's main pursuits have been in Western Classical and Jazz. His interests though, have never seen him content, but continually developing new ideas within a Western concert-making context. As a body of work much of his multi-style performance and poly-genre approaches defies categorization though individual pieces may be more easily pigeon-holed. Because of the many influences in his music he sees his effort as one to continually cross genre borders to effect a global art music. This is particularly evident on his album A Life where all of his influences on the guitar are formally paid homage in fresh original works.

The album Guitar Chant, offers a precedent in a new style of playing the guitar. This is the creation of new and adopted sounds that approximated a chant or plainsong style that embraces vocal ideas from Western Classical, Flamenco, Arab, Indian and Persian styles. The result are evocative and emotive sound worlds conveyed through the guitar's unique resonance.

Michael's guitar music then, allows the listener to experience many sound worlds and provides a new paradigm for guitar lovers. Michael's ensemble work is as an artistic director which has seen new music of varying genre characteristics realized. His Jazz fusion trio Acoustica, his art music group Centauri Ensemble and his Persian, Jazz, Classical fusion group Zafron Road Project are all parts of his creative work alongside his love of composing new choral, orchestral and chamber works.

You can find out more about Michael on his websites www.michaelknopf.com, www.mongrelmusic.ning.com and YouTube site.

A Life

Guitar Chant