Michael William Udow, born March 10, 1949, in Detroit, is an American percussionist, educator, and composer. He began with piano lessons, then switched to percussion and played in the Wichita Youth Orchestra as a teenager. Studying at the University of Illinois from 1967, Udow performed notable works and earned the BMI Student Composers Prize for his composition Seven Textural Settings of Japanese Haiku. He completed his Doctor of Musical Arts in percussion in 1978. From 1968 to 2009, he served as the principal percussionist in the Santa Fe Opera. Udow was a professor at the University of Michigan from 1982 until his retirement in 2011. Post-retirement, he focused on composition, creating works including two operas, The Shattered Mirror and Twelve Years a Slave, along with orchestral pieces, film scores, chamber music, and solo instrument compositions.
