After studying the visual arts while practising music, Michael Jarrell, born in Geneva in 1958, studied composition with Éric Gaudibert at the Conservatoire Populaire de Genève, and then with Klaus Huber at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik de Freiburg im Brisgau. A recipient of numerous awards since 1988, a resident at the Villa Médicis in Rome, and a member of the Swiss Institute of Rome in the late 1980s, Michael Jarrell has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna since 1993, as well as at the Haute École de Musique de Genève since 2004.