Michael Oesterle was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1968. He immigrated to Canada in 1982, and since 1996 has been living in Montréal. He has received several awards, such as the Gaudeamus Prize, the Grand Prize at the 12th CBC Radio National Competition for Young Composers, and the Canada Council Jules Léger Prize.

Oesterle’s works have been performed by ensembles including the Quatuor Bozzini, Ensemble Contemporain du Montréal (ECM), the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM), Ives Ensemble (Amsterdam), the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), the Chicago Civic Orchestra, les Percussions de Strasbourg, and the Montréal Symphony Orchestra.

He has produced projects in collaboration with composer Gerhard Staebler, violinist Clemens Merkel, painters Christine Unger and video/installation artist Wanda Koop. He composed the music for CNOTE, a film by animator Christopher Hinton, produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). CNOTE was recently shown at the Montreal and Toronto International Film Festivals, and won a GENIE for best Animated Short.

In 1997 he founded the Montréal based Ensemble KORE with pianist Marc Couroux, and between 2001 and 2004 he was composer-in-residence with l'Orchestre Metropolitain du Grand Montréal.

Anytime (2003)
for four saxophones (SSAA) and four percussionists.

The basic properties of the anytime are the following:

measurable quality: the precision of the approximate result is known
a predictable precision: if the amount of time is given the precision of the result can be easy computed
monotonicity: the precision of the result is growing in time
consistency: the quality of the result is correlated with the computation time and the quality of the inputs
the diminishing returns: the improvement of the solution is larger at the early stages of computation and it diminishes over time
Interruptibility: the process can be interrupted at any time and provide some answer
Preemptability: the process can be suspended and continued with minimal overhead
- from Anytime Algorithms In Digital Signal Processing, by Csaba Benedecsik

My motto and epitaph is:
“Anything, anytime, any place, for no reason at all”.
- Frank Zappa
Humo, December 1993 (an interview with Frank Zappa)

Anytime has been commissioned by the SMCQ with the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts. It has been premiered the in November 2003 by Quasar, Quad and Walter Boudreau (cond.) at the Salle Pierre-Mercure (Montreal).

Sometime (2004)
for saxophone quartet (SSAA)

Sometime was premiered by Quasar on November 25 2004 at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur.

Anytime