Michèle Bokanowski grew up in a family of artists. Her maternal grandfather was a professional double bassist, and her mother, Jeanne Marrain, was a pianist who studied with Alfred Cortot and accompanied silent films. Her father, Pierre Daninos, was a writer.

Until the age of twelve, Bokanowski studied piano with her mother and at the École Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud. Her academic journey began in Russian studies at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, though her passion for music remained strong. She translated several works, including by Leon Trotsky and Sergei Eisenstein. At twenty-two, after reading In Search of a Concrete Music by Pierre Schaeffer, she decided to study composition.

Bokanowski began classical training in harmony with Michel Puig, a student of René Leibowitz, who taught her writing and analysis following Arnold Schoenberg’s Theory of Harmony. In 1970, she began a two-year internship at the Research Branch of the French Broadcasting and Television Office under Schaeffer’s supervision, where she was the only woman selected among approximately twenty interns. Following this internship, she joined a research group on sound synthesis at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) under Jean-Claude Risset and Francis Régnier. She further studied computer music at the Faculty of Vincennes with Patrick Greussay and electronic music with Éliane Radigue.

Bokanowski’s first scores went unpublished: Sonate (1968) and Xeud (1970). Her official repertoire began with Korè (1972), marking the start of a long series of electroacoustic works. These were mostly composed in her personal studio with analog equipment and, from the 2010s, electronic equipment. She also used the studios of the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges, Nicolas Frize’s Paris studio, and the GRM studio. Bokanowski embraced the artisanal approach of working with magnetic tape, a basis from which she explored and manipulated sound material, from concrete and synthetic sounds, to instruments recorded in the studio or natural sounds. Her sound world draws inspiration from popular music, classical European music — such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Richard Wagner, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky — Indian music, experimental music, and minimalist American music, including figures like John Cage and Terry Riley.

Her main works were composed for concert performance, including Pour un pianiste (For a Pianist, 1974), commissioned by Gérard Frémy, Trois chambres d’inquiétude (Three Chambers of Concern, 1976), Tabou (Taboo, 1984), Phone Variations (1988), Cirque (Circus, 1994), L’étoile Absinthe (The Absinth Star, 2000), Chant d’Ombre (Chant of Shadow, 2004), Enfance (Childhood, 2011) commissioned by Radio France, Rhapsodia (2018), Cadence (2019), and Elsewhere (2020) commissioned by INA GRM. She has also composed for theater with Catherine Dasté, and for dance with choreographers Hideyuki Yano, Marceline Lartigue, and Bernardo Montet. Film scores hold a special place in her repertoire, particularly pieces she composed for the experimental films of her husband, Patrick Bokanowski. She has written music for his shorts from his debut work, La femme qui se poudre (The Woman Who Powders Herself, 1972), through his latest work, Au-delà (Beyond, 2023), as well as for his two feature films, L’Ange (The Angel, 1982) and Un Rêve solaire (A Solar Dream, 2016).

She lives and works in Paris.