Michel Godard was born on October 3, 1960, in Héricourt, in the Haute-Saône department near Belfort, and is a French tubist, serpent player and composer who also plays electric bass. He studied classical trumpet at the conservatoires of Besançon and Paris, and English Wikipedia says that at about eighteen he joined the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France. He took up the serpent, the tuba's Renaissance ancestor, in 1979. His way into jazz, by the account on his Discogs page, began when he went looking for music for tuba and found a record by the saxophonist Arthur Blythe and the tubist Bob Stewart.

The earliest credits under his name come from the Paris scene of the 1980s: records by the tuba band Steckar Tubapack (1981 to 1984), big band records by Antoine Hervé (Live in Paris) and Laurent Cugny (Lumière), both from 1983, and recordings by the brass group Concert Arban in the middle of the decade. His first record under his own name was Comédy (Big Noise, 1987), an LP shared with Jean-Marc Padovani, recorded in Paris in November and December 1986, on which he plays tuba and composed several pieces. Le Chant du Serpent (La Lichère, 1989), recorded in June 1989 on tuba, serpent and ophicleide with a group of voices, was the first record to put the serpent in front. From 1989 to 1991 he was the tubist of the Orchestre national de jazz under Claude Barthélemy, which made Claire (1990) and ONJ 90-91 Jack Line (1991) for Label Bleu.

The 1990s made him a regular in European improvised music. He played on records by the reed player Michael Riessler (What a Time, 1991, Héloïse, 1993), the hurdy-gurdy player Valentin Clastrier and Klaus König's orchestra for Enja, and he joined the oud player Rabih Abou-Khalil's band for The Sultan's Picnic (1994); English Wikipedia lists eight Abou-Khalil albums for Enja with him, running to Trouble in Jerusalem (2010). His own records of the decade were wide in range: Aborigène (Label Hopi, 1994), Répons (Studio SM, 1995), made with the monks' choir of the abbey of Ligugé, Una Mora (Label Hopi, 1996), a quartet record with the pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, the bassist Tony Overwater and the drummer Mark Nauseef, Loose Wires (Enja, 1997), a trio with the guitarist Miroslav Tadić and Nauseef, Dream Weavers (Label Hopi, 1997), with the singer Linda Sharrock and the saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig, and Sous les voûtes, le serpent... (MA Recordings, 1998), recorded in March 1997 in a monastery in Valladolid, Spain.

From 2000 his work spread across several lines at once. Castel del Monte (Enja, 2000), recorded in September 1998 at the Castel del Monte in Apulia, gathered the saxophonist and clarinettist Gianluigi Trovesi, the trumpeter Pino Minafra, the accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, the bassist Renaud Garcia-Fons, the percussionist Pierre Favre and the singer Lucilla Galeazzi, and a sequel, Castel del Monte II (Pietre di Luce) (Enja, 2002), was recorded there in April 2001, with the clarinettist Gabriele Mirabassi and the cellist Vincent Courtois among the players. With Mirabassi and the accordionist Luciano Biondini he recorded Lo Stortino (EGEA, 2000) and Latakia Blend (Enja, 2002), the second billed to Mirabassi. He made two duo albums with the tubist Dave Bargeron, Tuba Tuba (Enja, 2001) and TubaTubaTu (Enja, 2003), and a duo record with Favre, Deux (Altrisuoni, 2002); Saxophones (Intakt, 2004) is billed to Favre with the ARTE Quartett and Godard, and Favre's ensemble record Fleuve (ECM, 2006), recorded in Basel in October 2005, lists him on tuba and serpent. Trio Rouge (Intuition, 2004) was made with the singer Lucilla Galeazzi and the cellist Courtois, Cousins Germains (C.A.M. Jazz, 2005) with a band that included the saxophonist Christof Lauer, the alto saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig and the vibraphonist Franck Tortiller, Impertinance (C.A.M. Jazz, 2006) with Tortiller and the percussionist Patrice Héral, Blues in Mind (ACT, 2007) with Lauer and the drummer Gary Husband, and Deep (Intuition, 2007) with the saxophonist Gavino Murgia. In 2002 he began to teach serpent in the early-music department of the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM), and in 2005 he met the Swiss serpent maker Stephan Berger, with whom he later founded The Serpent Journey, a seminar held every two years in Les Bois in the Swiss Jura.

The 2010s brought projects that join early music and improvisation. Monteverdi: A Trace of Grace (Carpe Diem, 2011), recorded in June 2011 at the Noirlac abbey, set Monteverdi beside Godard's own pieces, with the singer Guillemette Laurens, Steve Swallow on bass, Murgia, the theorbist Bruno Helstroffer and the violinist Fanny Paccoud; a live record from the same abbey, Soyeusement, followed on vinyl in 2012. His trio with Biondini and the drummer Lucas Niggli made What Is There What Is Not (Intakt, 2011) and Mavì (2013), and a third record, Fables of Time, came out on Intakt in March 2026. Three Seasons (HGBS, 2014), a trio with the drummer Günter Sommer and the pianist Patrick Bebelaar, was named Album of the Year 2014 by The New York City Jazz Record, according to English Wikipedia, and A Serpent's Dream (Intuition, 2015) was credited to him and his group Le Miroir du Temps. Doux désirs (Dodicilune, 2017) is a duo with the oud player Ihab Radwan; Awakening (Buda Musique, 2019) a meeting with the Azerbaijani singer Alim Qasimov. His recent records include Twisted (2023) with Cristina Zavalloni, Astrolabio Mistico (Dodicilune, 2023) with Roberto Ottaviano and La Finestra di Puccini (Parco della Musica, 2026) with the pianist Danilo Rea.

Godard is known for bringing the serpent, a wooden bass wind instrument covered in leather and associated with plainchant and sacred music, back into improvised music, and in a 2016 newspaper profile he described aiming at the nuance and imperfection of the human voice rather than modern precision. On the tuba, German Wikipedia notes his use of multiphonics. His work moves between small-group jazz, Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, and collaborations with musicians from Italian, Arab and Azerbaijani traditions, and he writes most of his own material; a review of Doux désirs on All About Jazz described the duo's dialogue as focused and rigorous. His sources are as much classical as jazz: he began as a trumpeter trained in the conservatoire and an orchestral player, and the record that first showed him tuba in jazz was by Blythe and Stewart. The early-music strand is a large part of his catalogue, so that parts of it sit nearer to chamber and early music than to jazz, but his working life, label list (Enja, ECM, ACT, Intakt, C.A.M. Jazz) and sideman work are overwhelmingly in jazz and improvised music.