Michelle Featherstone

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1 Childhood
2 After Graduation
3 Music As A Career
4 Success
5 Interviews
6 Footnotes

[edit] Childhood

Born in Chester, raised in Cambridge, England, Michelle now resides in Hollywood, California. She began studying piano and composing original music at the age of nine, and hasn't stopped since. She has received awards from the Royal Academy of Music for piano and violin and the Bishops Award for Voice.

[edit] After Graduation

Surprisingly, however, Michelle didn't initially intend to pursue a career in music. As an art history major and anthropology minor at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania, she found herself managing the Walt Disney-Tishman Collection of African Art after graduation^[1] in a somewhat frustrating role:

It was heartbreaking in some ways for me because...I had come from the Guggenheim where if somebody sneezed in the general vicinity of a painting...a conservator was there with a little Q-tip...and I was now working for a corporation...that because it wasn't necessarily making them any money, they were a little bit more trepidations in spending money on the collection...it was frustrating mostly at times to work for them because of that reason.

[edit] Music As A Career

Fortunately for her fans, after about 18-months at Disney's Imagineering arm, Michelle decided that "corporate America" wasn't for her and made the decision to reconnect with her musical roots while working as a waitress in Southern California. Indeed, it was during one of her waitressing jobs that she just happened to play a few songs on the piano while the scheduled performers were on a break, that the audience's reaction was so overwhelmingly positive that she realized that music was something that she needed to seriously pursue.

It was the most bizarre experience...everybody sat down and was quiet...I played three songs and people were asking me where my album was...

[edit] Success

Her songs have garnered attention in both film and television over the past few years. One of her songs "Stay" has been featured on "Alias" for ABC, "Wonderfalls" for Fox and the CW's "One Tree Hill" as well as in several independent film projects with Group 101. Another song, "Over You", was featured on "Smallville" for the WB network and the newly recorded "I'm There Too" played on the premier episode of Aaron Spelling's new drama "Summerland". "Summerland" also used "I Will Be Fine" later in the season and "All That I Want" featured in the premier episode of NBC's "Las Vegas". A recent showcase of the Sundance film festival introduced Michelle to many independent feature film makes some of who are using her music for upcoming projects this summer.

This past year, Michelle has been working on various other music projects in Los Angeles and the UK. "Project PI" by Al West features Michelle singing her song "Please". The album will be release in Europe by the end of this year.

Michelle is an active participant in the singer/songwriter community of Southern California, and has performed at clubs as diverse as the Whiskey A Go Go, the Hotel Cafe, Ghengis Cohen, the Joint and the Temple Bar, to name a few.

She recently recorded a select few songs with producer Evan Biegel of Seasound Studios in North Hollywood and is collaborating on an electronica album, due out early next year. New acoustic recordings are an on going project and a compilation of some of them will be released over the next few months.