Michael Jarrell initially studied fine arts and music. He studied composition at the Genenva Conservatory with Eric Gaudibert and with Klaus Huber in Fribourg-en-Brisgau. After a short stay in Paris during which he studied computer-music at IRCAM, he was a resident at the Villa Médicis and a member of the Swiss Instittue in Rome. From 1991 to 1993, he was a composer-in-residence at the Orchestre de Lyon, and then in 1996 at the Lucerne festvial. The Musica Nova Helsinki festival was dedicated to him in March 2000. In 2001, the Salzbourg festival commissioned a concerto for piano and orchestra from Jarrell, Abschied.

Jarrell’s oeuvre is marked by the art of Giacometti and Varèse who constantly reworked the same idea. The composer uses recurrent motifs that develop different offshoots through his works. While included in the progenies of serialism, the music of Michael Jarrell can be characterized by a certain transparent textre, an original approache to notions of figuration and harmonic polarity, inside a formal conception of a discursive and dramatic essence.

Three dramatic works mark his career: the monodrama Cassandre (1994), the opera Galilei (2006) with at text by Bertold Brecht and a work for musical theater, Le Père (2010), based on a story by Heiner Müller. Michael Jarrell teaches composition at the Haute école de musique in Geneva.