Mikhail (Misha) Fiksel is a Tony Award winning sound designer, composer, producer and dj, whose adventurous approach to all things sound have earned him a reputation of a much sought-after creator and collaborator.
Recent recognitions include the 2022 Tony Award for Best Sound Design of a Play, 2020 Obie Award, 2020 Lucille Lortel Award, 2019 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, 2020 Joseph Jefferson Award, and a 2020 Drama Desk Nomination for his work on DANA H, a unique solo-performance told entirely in lip-sync to edited audio interviews. The audio docu-drama “City on Fire: Chicago Race Riots 2019” (produced by WBEZ and Make Believe Association) for which Fiksel composed original music and designed sound has been recently recognized with “1st place for Audio Documentary” by the Public Media Journalists Association and with 2020 1st Place and "Best in Show" for Radio at the 85th Annual Headliner Awards. And Newcity included Fiksel on their annual feature “Players 2020: The Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago”.
Originally from Siberia (Akademgorodok, outside of Novosibirsk, Russia, to be exact), he was deeply immersed in the classical music tradition from an early age. Upon immigrating to the US, he soon discovered underground electronic music and dj culture and has been dj-ing ever since. As a result, his aesthetic is often hard to pin down as it is informed by a broad appreciation of the obscure and of pop culture and by his predilection towards juxtaposition, re-contextualisation, and challenging the definitions of music and sound. But this genre-bending approach has led him to collaborations with many prolific artists such as Chay Yew, Les Waters, Robert Falls, Kimberly Senior, Anne Kaufman, Lee Sunday-Evans, Marti Lyons, Lisa Portes, Jaime Casteneda, Stuart Carden, Carrie Hanson, Erin Kilmurray, Pigpen Theatre Company, Albany Park Theatre Project, Third Rail Projects and many others.
His work can be experienced at various venues throughout the US, as well as different digital platforms, and he is busy developing new content for the screen, the stage, and everything in between.