Michelle Isaac is a Chicago-based composer and orchestrator known for her playful and poignant works for the concert hall, stage, and screen. Often employing elements of humor and extensive historical research, she creates deeply nuanced narrative-driven music that is delectably intricate and sweepingly cinematic.
Isaac is actively sought out for her orchestral writing, and her recent world premieres include Pressing Truths, commissioned and premiered by soprano Ashley Fabian and the Reno Philharmonic under the baton of Laura Jackson, and Reverie on the Mother Road, commissioned and premiered by the Illinois Symphony Orchestra led by Taichi Fukumura. Her 2026-2027 season features performances by the DuPage Symphony Orchestra, the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra, the Millikin University Percussion Ensemble, the Crystal Lake Community Band, and a commission from the Quincy Symphony Orchestra (IL).
A Chicago DCASE grant winner and Chicago Sinfonietta’s inaugural Freeman Composing Fellow, Isaac has reached audiences globally, with notable performances by the Reno Philharmonic, Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta at Millennium Park, Navy Pier, Symphony Center, and Auditorium Theatre, Paradox Opera, the UW-River Falls Percussion Ensemble, and the Knox-Galesburg Symphony. She received the Gerts and Hammond Award from the Musicians Club of Women, and through her Chicago Sinfonietta fellowship received mentorship from Music Director Mei-Ann Chen and composers Jennifer Higdon, Joel Thompson, and Kathryn Bostic. She won first prize at songSLAM Chicago 2023 for What Every Woman Must Not Say, part of her Are Women People? song cycle that features a “delicious setting” (Chicago Classical Review) of suffragist Alice Duer Miller’s poetry. Isaac is enthusiastically active in music education, and she has held guest lecturer positions with Roosevelt University, OPUS Chamber Music Camp, The People’s Music School, Chicago Area Music Teachers Composition Festival, Pianos in the Park, and an ongoing residency with Woodridge (IL) School District 68.
Isaac received a Society of Composers and Lyricists New York Mentorship and was the inaugural winner of the Miriam Mayer Perspective Composer Grant, awarded by a panel of top Hollywood composers and agents as an exciting new voice in film scoring. Her media projects include scoring the College of St. Benedict Alumni Podcast, sonic branding for Peckham Media Productions, score preparation for Barbie The Movie: In Concert and Labyrinth: In Concert, and short films by local Chicago artists. She created a 90-minute orchestral/EDM fusion score for a sold-out Nutcracker-parody theatrical production at Chicago's Greenhouse Theatre, hailed by Third Coast Review as "a techno-classical menage that is the perfect accompaniment to the outrageous merriment on the stage." She is an active member of the Society of Composers and Lyricists Chicago chapter, the Alliance for Women Film Composers, and ASCAP.
A native of Waukegan, IL, Isaac is an accomplished percussionist and pianist, getting her musical start in the Waukegan Public School system. She earned her Master of Music in Composition from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, where she studied with Stacy Garrop and Kyong Mee Choi, and her Bachelor of Arts in Music from the College of Saint Benedict.