New York-based composer and jazz producer Michael Colina has written unforgettable music for television, film, theatre, dance and the concert stage for more than 20 years, and has produced CDs for greats like Bob James, David Sanborn, Michael Brecker, Marcus Miller, Bill Evans, Michael Franks and Marilyn Scott.

A multiple Grammy® winner, Colina has worked alongside recording legends like George Benson, Earl Klugh, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt, and his music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Japan.

After 25 years of helping others create their music, Colina is focusing today on the music that he has always dreamed of creating for himself. His most recent works reflect a new direction, one that pulls threads from jazz, classical, and his Cuban-American heritage – a music that transcends categories and takes the listener to an invisible world of subtle discovery.

“Standing in the present, connected to the past and looking to the future, my music is like a Trojan horse,” Colina explains. “Some composers try to shock you, to create dissonance or discomfort. Not so with my music; you let it in and something happens to you later. It goes down smooth, but it’s like time release – you find out later it’s taken you on a very specific journey. Whenever music is with me and I am composing, I seek above all: consequence and its accompanying beauty! The satisfaction of symmetry or asymmetry, of emotional sequence of narrative; the totality of which is charged with the intention of revealing a mystery, its dark, its light – its soft, round angles, its leap or glide.”

“I think there is an invisible world alive inside my music,” he adds. “You simply must experience it, something familiar yet unfamiliar.”

Examples of this new direction include "The Isles of Shoals", a solo for flute and orchestra; The “Idoru” Piano Trio for piano, violin and cello; "The People", an orchestral work for Richard Kuch commissioned by the Boston Ballet; and a Modern Dance score, "A Time of Crickets", commissioned by Pauline Koner and supported by The National Endowment for the Arts.

Colina’s discography includes two solo CDs for the Private Music label, Shadow of Urbano and Rituals. His 1998
award-winning tribute to Jaco Pastorius, "Who Loves You", was released in Japan by JVC Entertainment. He produced the star-studded Portrait of Bill Evans, published in the U.S. in July, 2004 by Transparent Records, featuring keyboard legends Bob James, Herbie Hancock, Dave Grusin, Brad Mehldau and Eliane Elias.

He produces and writes for many of the great contemporary jazz musicians of today. He has three Gold Records to his name, and has been nominated for four Grammy® awards and won three in the field of Contemporary Jazz. His score for the 1985 Mary Tyler Moore-Robert Preston film Finnegan Begin Again, co-composed with saxophonist David Sanborn, won an ACE Award for Best Film Score.

Colina, born of Cuban-American heritage, studied composition at the North Carolina School of the Arts with Vittorio Giannini, Louis Mennini and Robert Ward. He continued studies at the Chigiana in Sienna, Italy with Thomas Pasatieri and Roman Vlad. He was the first recipient of the Vittorio Giannini Memorial Scholarship award.

Colina is deeply grateful for the honors and success his music has brought him over the years. But his greatest satisfaction comes from the creative process itself. “In the end,” he says, “I want to be remembered as someone whose music was honest, passionate, and poetic.”