Lamont Staff Profile: Michael Furry
Michael Furry
Building Coordinator, Lamont School of Music | Bluegrass Artist & Educator
Michael Furry brings together two distinct but deeply connected worlds: music and operations. As the Building Coordinator for the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver, Michael plays a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in ensuring the school’s physical space functions smoothly every single day. He is also a prolific bluegrass musician and educator, known for founding Lamont’s Bluegrass Ensemble in 2018 and directing it until 2024. His dual identity as both a skilled technician and an accomplished artist makes him a uniquely integral part of the Lamont community.
In his operations role, Michael’s responsibilities span a broad spectrum: building maintenance and repairs, asset management, concert hall equipment upgrades, scheduling, locker assignments, and managing ongoing renovations. He is the first line of response for anything physical within the building—whether it’s replacing a broken chair, coordinating large-scale carpet replacement, or converting Lamont into an all-LED facility as part of DU’s sustainability initiatives.
“While I may not be responsible for everything, I have to have a working knowledge of who is responsible,” he explains. “Basically, I have to make sure everything is running how it should be running. When there’s any uncertainty about who handles something, I handle it—or find who does.”
Michael’s role is often invisible until something goes wrong, which is exactly the way he approaches it. “Rarely do I get an email that says, ‘everything is going great, good job!’” he jokes. “My job is to know when something is going wrong so that I can fix it.”
Since joining Lamont in 2015, Michael has become one of the school’s most trusted and longest-serving staff members. His calm competence and encyclopedic understanding of the building made him indispensable during one of Lamont’s most uncertain periods: the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2020, during a family trip to Texas over spring break, Michael received word that the University was shutting down. Named the sole essential employee for Lamont, he cut his trip short and drove back to Denver. “That Monday, I walked into the building—literally the only person in the entire place,” he recalls. “The echo of my footsteps was so loud. The air in the air ducts sounded like a monsoon. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. It felt like the zombie apocalypse film 28 Days Later.”
From March through the summer of 2020, Michael was the only presence inside Lamont’s walls. Faculty and students who needed access to instruments or materials would meet him at the front entrance. “They’d stand twelve feet away while I placed the item outside, closed the door, and then they could approach. That was our protocol,” he says.
As the University began developing guidelines for eventual reopening, Michael was responsible for posting signage, preparing spaces, and figuring out how to navigate new rules around room capacities and distancing. He was joined over time by a few others—Phil Quinn from maintenance, Garret Glass from the Newman Center, piano technician Keith Jones—but the responsibility for Lamont’s physical continuity largely rested on his shoulders.
“I will never forget those couple of years. They will always stand out—for better or worse,” he says.
Originally from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Michael holds a Bachelor’s degree in guitar performance from the University of North Texas and a Master’s in music theory from the University of Colorado Boulder. Though he grew up surrounded by bluegrass—“it was always playing at my grandfather’s house”—he didn’t begin performing it seriously until adulthood. For a long time, he thought of it as “my grandparents’ music.” But a transformative experience at a Colorado bluegrass show, where he saw his own generation embracing the style, changed his perspective: “Seeing their reaction to it, I gained a new perspective… that someone who was born in the ’80s could be playing bluegrass.”
In addition to his work at Lamont, Michael is the frontman for the band Hilltop Harvest and performs with the Americana group Miss Amy and the Jet Set Band. His musical influences range from foundational artists like Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, and George Strait to contemporary bluegrass stars like Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle.
Outside of work and music, Michael enjoys working on his house and learning new trades. Inspired by his experience working alongside campus electricians, HVAC techs, and plumbers, he’s developed a hands-on approach to home improvement and finds great satisfaction in solving complex, practical problems.
Most of all, Michael is a dedicated father to two sons, Julian and Remy. “All of my decisions are prioritized by, does this benefit my family?” he says. “When I got this job, I got it for two reasons: to provide for my family, and to do so in a way that let me be surrounded by music.”
He adds, “Being a parent has given me an understanding of people in general. How to connect and communicate with others. It has taught me a lot of patience and understanding—which has helped me in every part of life.”
