Michele Mercure

American producer and composer born in Springfield, Massachusetts, who moved to Pennsylvania in the late 1970s and is now living there east of Harrisburg (USA). Back when MTV was first starting out and they played primarily music videos, Mercure provided the music and sound design for a series of 10 second animated intros with the MTV logo. During that period she also started doing live performances, and releasing DIY / independent "mail circuit" cassettes with hand-painted and hand-drawn artwork, viz. the 1983 tape Rouge And Mint, 1984’s A Cast Of Shadows, 1985’s Dreams Without Dreamers, 1986's Eye Chant (an LP not a tape) and 1990’s Dreamplay - of which the first 4 were released under the Michele Musser name. It was the Olympia based OP Magazine which made her discover cassette culture, and it led to her corresponding with Conrad Schnitzler. Mostly working with synthesizers, Mercure also plays the guitar. She has also worked with other artists, e.g. The Commonwealth Stage Company, and currently runs a film production company with her partner Mary Haverstick.

"The first time veteran experimental musician Michele Mercure realized she had a passion for combining sound and theater was when she was asked to score an avant-garde staging of Waiting For Godot in her old hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1982. While soundtracking the Beckett play, she found herself inspired by the immediate, ephemeral nature of performance; the experience activated within her a desire for pairing the aural with the visual that has informed much of her work since." (Leah Mandel, 2018-11-14)