Michael Hilgendorf

Michael Hilgendorf is a New York guitarist and composer whose playing folds the harmonic density of Kurt Rosenwinkel and the elastic interplay of Miles Davis' second quintet into the rhythmic drive of progressive metal. Raised in the suburbs of Detroit, he came up as a rock and blues player, and his band won the Detroit Blues Society's youth blues challenge when he was fifteen. He studied in Wayne State University's J.C. Heard Jazz program, took a bachelor's in jazz studies at Columbia College Chicago, and completed a master's in jazz at Manhattan School of Music with Mike Moreno, Phil Markowitz, Marc Cary, and Jaleel Shaw. In New York he has performed and recorded with Dayna Stephens, Donny McCaslin, Jon Irabagon, Kendrick Scott, and Wycliffe Gordon, and has led his own projects at The Jazz Gallery. He received a Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award in 2025 for his composition "Something Melancholy".