Michael Andrew Doherty is a Colorado-based composer and performer who specializes in silence, listening, and the Japanese bamboo flute, shakuhachi.  His musicking is an exploration into a "true" minimalism, utilizing silence (jp. ma) as an essential element.

While living in a small village located in a remote valley of the Rocky Mountains, he began to explore the Japanese aesthetic of ma, elemental to the traditional Zen repertoire for shakuhachi (honkyoku). He studies shakuhachi under Dai Shihan (Grand Master) Michael Chikuzen Gould, student of the revered masters Taniguchi Yoshinobu and Yokoyama Katsuya.  As a performer, shakuhachi has become the focal point of his music endeavors, focusing on the traditional Zen solo pieces called honkyoku, but also on modern, and Japanese folk songs. 

Michael has also worked in sound design and soundtrack composition, installation, live performance, and engineering, for both theater and motion picture works, of note for Paragon Theatre Ensemble.  Other collaborative work includes partnerships with Bret Ellerton and Toby Sinkinson.

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