Born in Paris, Michaël Levinas went through the classical and high level teaching of the National Superior Conservatory of Paris, running at once studies of piano, the famous class of accompaniment, orchestra conducting and composing. In that institution he met the great musicians who made the deepest impression on him, in particular, the pianists Vlado Perlemuter, Yvonne Lefébure, but also Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen.
Besides those classical studies at the National Superior Conservatory of Paris, his musical training was marked from his very early childhood by another musical tradition, the Russian school of piano, thanks to his mother, the pianist Raissa Lévy. Coming from Moscow and Lithuania, she had studied several years in Vienna, in particular with the virtuosi and teachers Sirota, Isserlis and some other great piano masters of Central Europe. This musical tradition was also those musicians’ one, at the same time performers and creators.
Michaël Levinas was appointed as scholarship student at the Villa Medicis in Rome, directed then by the painter Balthus, another of his great encounters.
He created in 1973, with his classmates of Messiaen’s class, Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey, the ensemble Itinéraire.
Between his first works, like Arsis et Thésis (1971), Clov et Hamm (1973), Appels (1974), Froissements d’ailes (1975), Ouverture pour une fête étrange (1979), Concerto pour un piano espace (1977-1981, including his great works for orchestra, like La Cloche fêlée (1988), Par-delà (1994), Évanoui (2009) or very recently Amphithéâtre (2012), Michaël Levinas is a pioneer regarding to the new ideas of the instrumental writing and the development of the sound range by the technological environments. His works for ensemble, orchestra and soloist are created and repeated by the most famous ensembles, festivals and institutions in France and abroad : Festival of Donaueschingen, International meetings of de Darmstadt, Ircam, Cité de la Musique, Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Ictus, Ensemble Itinéraire, Klang Forum, Le Balcon, Radio France, Multilatérales, Biennale de Venise…
Let us add that within the contemporary musical scene, Michaël Levinas is above all characterized by an undeniable dramatic gift, a connection with the text, the theatre and the scene. Michaël Levinas is well known as a composer of operas and was commissioned by important European theatres. Since La Conférence des oiseaux (1985), he wrote not less than three great lyrical works, all of them created in important European theatres : Go-gol (1996), adapted from Gogol’s novel, (Le Manteau) ; Les Nègres, adapted from Jean Genêt’s text ; La Métamorphose (2010), adapted from Kafka’s story. This closeness with the text, literature, poetry is central to the close relation which  Michaël Levinas maintained all his life with his father, the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who passed on to him the taste of languages, thought, risk, interpretation and writing.
A new opera, adapted from Saint Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince (commissioned by both operas of Lausanne and Lille) is created in 2015 in these two theatres as well as in the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Chatelet in Paris, and then in Liège.
Michaël Levinas teaches at the National Superior Conservatory of Music of Paris and is Member of the Beaux-Arts Academie of the Institut de France.