American composer Michael Torke (born September 22, 1961 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), graduated from Wauwatosa East High School, studied at the Eastman School of Music with Joseph Schwantner and Christopher Rouse, and at Yale University, and writes music influenced by jazz and minimalism. Sometimes described as a post-minimalist, his most postminimal piece is Four Proverbs, in which the syllable for each pitch is fixed and variations in the melody produce streams of nonsense words.