About Dr. Braz:

Michael Braz received his B.M. and M.M. degrees from the University of Miami, later completing a Ph.D. as a University Fellow at Florida State University. A keyboard soloist in England's Haslemere Festival of Early Music, he has also collaborated with numerous orchestras, music festivals, and ensembles ranging from chamber music to jazz and rock.

While teaching at Miami's Barry University, Braz wrote and premiered his first opera, Memoirs from the Holocaust, inspired by a visit to the Dachau concentration camp site. He has written orchestral/choral commissions for professional, collegiate, and school/community ensembles across the country, and was a recipient of an American Composers Forum/Rockefeller Brothers Fund "Faith Partners" grant. As the 2006 commissioned composer for Georgia Music Teachers Association, he wrote Three Provocations for solo piano. With over 20 published works in print, his most recent issues are settings of I Saw Three Ships and Deep River (treble choir), A Suite of Carols (orchestra, optional chorus) and Variations on a Theme by Beethoven (solo flute). Most recently, he premiered his second opera (A Scholar Under Siege) concerning racial politics in 1941 Georgia and the firing of a respected college president by the populist governor of that state.

In his many years as a music educator, Braz has served as Associate Director of the Miami Choral Society, Conductor/Musical Director of the Boy Singers of Maine, and Founder/Director of Tallahassee 's Capital Children's Chorus and the Statesboro Youth Chorale. In the past, he has held several leadership positions, including State Theory Chair (GMTA), Georgia Collegiate MENC Advisor (GMEA) and National Repertoire and Standards Chair for Boychoirs (ACDA).

As Professor of Music at Georgia Southern University and a 20-year faculty member, Dr. Braz teaches music composition, analytical techniques and orchestration, as well as courses on such subjects as Finale music software and Wagner's Ring Cycle. He is a book and music reviewer for various journals and publishers, and is in demand as a conductor, clinician, lecturer, and adjudicator. In the past, Braz has served as President of the Statesboro Arts Council and received Georgia Southern's President's Medal, the Award for Excellence in Service, the Ruffin Cup faculty award from the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and the Statesboro Herald's "Humanitarian of the Year" recognition. His hobbies are comparative religions and trekking in the Nepal Himalaya.