Professor J. Michael Thompson is professor of ecclesiastical chant at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He is also the cantor and director of music at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral in Munhall, Pennsylvania, and a member of the Inter-Eparchial Music Commission for the Byzantine Catholic Church in the USA.  He is the director of the Schola Cantorum of Saint Peter the Apostle (based in Chicago, IL), which has made forty-five recordings of liturgical music since 1990, manyt of which are published by the Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN.  He is a member of the Advisory Council of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, representing Eastern Church Musicians.  For twelve years, he was the director of music ministry at St. Peter’s in the Loop, the Franciscan church in the heart of Chicago’s downtown.  He is a popular clinician with the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (especially in regard to Gregorian chant), and a published author and composer.  Thompson has a B.A. in music history and German from Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin (1975) and a Master’s in Church Music from Concordia University, River Forest, Illinois (1984).  He also did seminary studies at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, and at St. Sophia Ukrainian Orthodox Seminary in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.