Michael Silhavy is GIA’s Senior Project Editor. With degrees in music education, theology, and liturgical studies from De Paul University, Loyola University (Chicago), and Saint John’s University (Collegeville, MN), Michael has worked in parish, grade school, university, cathedral, and diocesan settings. He values the weekly experience of making music with a congregation as director of music at St. Mary Church, Riverside, Illinois. His work at GIA centers around choral and congregational music, hymnals, and working with composers and authors to create musical and liturgical resources for both Roman Catholic congregations and the wider ecumenical community. He worked with noted composer Richard Proulx in creating The Richard Proulx Collection, an annotated catalog of Proulx’s published and unpublished compositions housed at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota and he contributed biographies on American composers and authors for the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology.
In his free time, Michael enjoys following Chicago sports teams, opera, and travel. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife Wendy (who is Senior Coordinator for Liturgy and Music for the Archdiocese of Chicago) and their Alaskan Malamutes.