Michelle Doyle Tschirhart

Michelle Doyle Tschirhart, originally from Boston, Massachusetts, has performed with such notable ensembles as the St. Louis Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Boston Ballet Orchestra, Ravinia Festival Orchestra, Des Moines Metro Opera, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Toledo Symphony, Michigan Opera Theatre, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Alabama Symphony, Boston Modern Orchestra Project and many more. She plays principal clarinet in the Oakland and Rochester Symphonies (Michigan) and second and bass clarinet with the Warren Symphony. Michelle has been a core member of the Memphis Symphony, Iris Chamber Orchestra, The Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Kenosha Symphony, New Hampshire Symphony, Cape Cod Symphony, Nashua Symphony and the Des Moines Metro Opera performing under the batons of Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, Leonard Slatkin, Benjamin Zander, James DuPreist and many more.
Michelle is a champion of new music. She has worked closely with the American Composers Forum, and premiered works by Gene Coleman, Keith Carpenter, Robert Patterson, Michael Gandolfi, James Territo, and more. Michelle was a founding member of the Boston-based new music ensemble Xanthos, and has performed regularly with the Firebird Ensemble. She was a core member of the Chicago-based Ensemble No Amnesia with Gene Coleman.
Chamber music has played a large part in Michelle’s career. She was the clarinetist with the Vento Chiaro Woodwind Quintet, Ensemble in Residence at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA for many years. With Vento Chiaro, Michelle was an Artist-Faculty-in-Residence at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Michelle was also a founding member of the Boston-based new music ensemble Xanthos. She has performed with the Radius Ensemble, The Firebird Ensemble and countless other chamber ensembles.
Michelle has also had a thriving teaching career where she is the clarinet professor at Oakland University. She is also on the applied faculty at the Cranbrook Schools. Michelle has been on the applied faculty at The University of Mississippi and at Arkansas State University. She has been faculty at Phillips Exeter Academy and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and a guest artist lecturer at the Longy School of Music.
Michelle attended the University of Michigan School of Music on a full-tuition talent scholarship, graduating with a BM in Clarinet Performance and a BA in Political Science. She holds a Masters in Clarinet Performance from Northwestern University and an Artist Diploma from the St. Louis Conservatory and School for the Arts. Michelle’s principal teachers have included: J. Lawrie Bloom, Russell Dagon, Larry Combs, Peter Schmidl, George Silfies, Fred Ormand, John Mohler, William Wrzesien, Julie Vaverka and Paulette Bowes.