Hailed as “superb” with “very-fine six-mallet marimba playing” (The Scotland Herald, 2025), “brilliant” (Opera Canada, 2024), “excellent” (New York Times, 2022) and “captivating” (Myanmar Times, 2018), Michael Murphy is a Chinese-Canadian percussionist who has toured North America, Scandinavia, Europe, and Asia. As an orchestral musician he has performed with groups such as the Toronto Symphony, the National Ballet of Canada, the Esprit Orchestra, the Hamilton Philharmonic, and the Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg. In the contemporary music world he is regularly involved with groups such as New Music Concerts, Continuum, Arraymusic, Soundstreams, and Ensemble Scope, and with festivals such as Nuit Blanche, the New Creations Festival, 2D2N in Odessa, and Frau* musica nova.

An avid commissioner and advocate for Canadian music, Michael has premiered concertos by Alice Ping Yee Ho, Liam Ritz, and Bob Becker, and has brought various Canadian works to international audiences. His broad network has also resulted in new percussion works from the USA, Hong Kong, Poland, Ukraine, China, Japan, and Germany, including Yu Kuwabara’s “この素晴らしき共振世界 (What A Wonderful Resonating World)” in 2025. He remains a dedicated commissioner as a soloist and chamber musician in groups like Duo Holz (with Aysel Taghi-Zada) and Freesound.

Michael is the featured xylophone-soloist in the internationally acclaimed videogame Cuphead (Delicious Last Course, 2022), with a published transcription of his solo from A Recipe for Ms. Chalice by MostlyMarimba. His media credits also include recording percussion for and appearing in the film Tuner starring Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman, and Havana Rose Liu, and serving as the drummer and sound engineer for the “Dashan and Friends” Canadian tour. His extensive discography of chamber and contemporary works includes music by Brian Current (Missing, 2025), Huang Ruo (Book of Mountains and Seas, 2025), Paolo Griffin (Supports and Surfaces, 2024), Russell Hartenberger (Arlington, 2024), Sophie Dupuis (Comme Bon Lui Semble, 2023), and Chris Paul Harman (Works 2019-2023).

As a practitioner of non-Western arts, Michael has studied Japanese taiko, Iranian tombak, and Gagaku in Osaka with the Shitennōji Gagaku troupe Garyokai. He is frequently invited to give guest lectures to both percussion and composition students at universities in Toronto, Germany, and Japan, including the Senzoku College of Music, Kunitachi College of Music, and SOAI University. Since 2020, he has become an avid performer and commissioner of the shō (Japanese mouth organ), performing in Duo Holz, Duo HS (with clarinettist Carlos Cordeiro) and the trio shshcc (two shōs and accordion). His commitment to this work continues through his PhD research at the Université franco-allemande, focusing on concepts of time in japan resulting from historic relationships and experiences with the more-than-human environment. Michael’s commitment to music education also extends to the community, where he has led improv and found-sound workshops for non-musicians.

Michael has been a member of the Book of Mountains and Seas production tour with Ars Nova Copenhagen since its premiere in 2021, and on an ongoing production tour of Coo, contemporary music for babies and toddlers, developed in collaboration with the Wee Festival.

Last Update: September 2025