Michael Simonelli is a world-class sound artist, producer, and collaborator whose work spans music, installation, performance, and post-production.
Charts & Leisure
Podcast Production & Sound Design
Since 2018, Simonelli has led the audio engineering team at Charts & Leisure. His work includes, Tiny Matters (Signal Award winner, 2022), Future of Storytelling Podcast (Webby-nominated, 2024) and and many others. He’s produced and mixed for clients such as Chanel, IMDb, Longreads, and The Markup, and helped pioneer the team’s remote recording practices.
Other Fantasies for Extinction
The Other Fantasies for Extinction Listening Party, a collaboration with Rachel Garber Cole, is a dreamy meditation on Deep Time, past mass extinctions, and the spreading of modern Homo sapiens across the globe. I produced and sound designed a 25 minute audio essay and co-host immersive listening events to encourage communities to collectively discuss their emotional experiences surrounding the climate crisis. You can attend a Listening Party Event, or host one yourself.
Composer
I’ve written music most of my life and go wherever the creative spirit and moment take me. Presently I’m interested in using generative tools to develop and iterate on raw material and exploring different ways to shape and give meaning to these sounds. Two recent albums, Umori (2024) and Heart Hz (2022) are exemplary of this process. You can learn about this work and more here.
Producer
As a producer I help people bring their ideas to life. I have decades of experience as a recording engineer, mixer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. I’ll go out of my way to help something sound the best it can, especially if it’s a project that I love and I’ve been lucky to work with some amazingly talented musicians and friends over the years. You can find a list of production credits here.
The Accessible Instrument
The Accessible Instrument, in conjunction with sculptor Michael Fortenberry, is a collaborative, interactive sound installation that combines large-scale sculpture, embedded motion sensors, and generative audio to create a healing, somatic experience. Hidden sensors inside suspended wooden forms translate physical gestures into immersive soundscapes—drones, white noise, and environmental textures—via a wireless system built on Arduino microcontrollers and MaxMSP.
Designed as both a musical interface and a metaphor for the expressive body, the installation invites participants of all abilities into playful and grounding physical engagement. Informed by somatic psychology, meditation, and Body-Mind Centering, the work fosters nervous system regulation and embodied presence.
Education
I have a masters degree in Music Theory and Composition from University of Massachusetts Amherst (2014). My masters thesis “Problem-Solving Pedagogy: A Foundation for Restructuring, Updating, and Improving Undergraduate Theory and Musicianship Curricula” provides an ideological and practical foundation for an improved approach to undergraduate theory and musicianship pedagogy. If you’re here because you’ve come across this paper in your research, please reach out with any questions!
