Michael Feinstein

Michael Jay Feinstein, born September 7, 1956, in Columbus, Ohio, is an American singer, pianist, archivist, and interpreter of the repertoire known as the Great American Songbook. A five-time Grammy-nominated and multi-platinum-selling recording artist, Feinstein has built a career spanning Broadway performance, recording, nightclub ownership, radio hosting, conducting, and institutional advocacy for American popular music. He is the founder of the Great American Songbook Foundation and serves as artistic director for Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana.

Feinstein was raised in Columbus, the son of Florence Mazie Feinstein, an amateur tap dancer, and Edward Feinstein, a sales executive for the Sara Lee Corporation and former amateur singer. At five years old he began piano lessons, but his tutor discontinued them after discovering he was playing by ear rather than reading sheet music. Feinstein subsequently taught himself piano. Following high school, he spent two years performing in local piano bars before relocating to Los Angeles at age twenty.

Through the widow of concert pianist and actor Oscar Levant, Feinstein was introduced in 1977 to lyricist Ira Gershwin, who hired him to catalog an extensive collection of phonograph records. That initial assignment expanded into six years of researching, cataloging, and preserving unpublished sheet music and rare recordings at Gershwin's home, encompassing the work of both Ira and his brother, composer George Gershwin. During those years, Feinstein also formed a friendship with Gershwin's next-door neighbor, singer Rosemary Clooney, which lasted until Clooney's death. In 1983, Feinstein served as musical consultant for the Broadway production My One and Only, a musical pastiche of Gershwin tunes.

By the mid-1980s, Feinstein had established himself as a nationally recognized cabaret singer-pianist. His recording career began with Pure Gershwin in 1987, a collection of music by George and Ira Gershwin, followed by Live at the Algonquin in 1986, Remember: Michael Feinstein Sings Irving Berlin in 1987, Isn't It Romantic in 1988, and Over There in 1989. In 1987, he appeared in the thirtysomething episode "But Not for Me," performing "But Not for Me," "Love Is Here to Stay," and "Isn't It Romantic?" In 1992, he recorded Pure Imagination, his only children's album.

Feinstein's Broadway career began in 1988 and extended through 2010. He starred in Michael Feinstein in Concert from April through June 1988, followed by Michael Feinstein in Concert: "Isn't It Romantic" from October through November of that same year. In 1988, he received a Drama Desk Special Award for celebrating American musical theater songs. He returned to Broadway in October 1990 with Michael Feinstein in Concert: Piano and Voice, and in 2010 appeared alongside Dame Edna in the concert duo production All About Me, which ran from March through April of that year.

In the early 1990s, Feinstein undertook a series of songbook albums, each devoted to a featured composer and often recorded in collaboration with that composer. These included two volumes with Burton Lane in 1990 and 1992, a collaboration with Jule Styne in 1991, Michael Feinstein Sings the Jerry Herman Songbook in 1993, a collaboration with Hugh Martin in 1995, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans in 2002, and Only One Life: The Songs of Jimmy Webb in 2003. He also recorded three albums of standards with Maynard Ferguson: Forever in 1993, Such Sweet Sorrow in 1995, and Big City Rhythms in 1999. Later Gershwin recordings included Nice Work If You Can Get It: Songs by the Gershwins in 1996 and Michael & George: Feinstein Sings Gershwin in 1998. His twenty-first-century albums include Romance on Film, Romance on Broadway in 2000, Michael Feinstein with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 2001, Hopeless Romantics featuring George Shearing in 2005, and The Sinatra Project in 2008.

In 2000, the Library of Congress appointed Feinstein to the National Recording Preservation Board, an organization dedicated to safeguarding America's musical heritage. That same year, he opened Feinstein's at Loews Regency New York, a Manhattan nightclub that operated from 1999 to 2012 and presented performers including Rosemary Clooney, Liza Minnelli, Glen Campbell, Barbara Cook, Diahann Carroll, Jane Krakowski, Lea Michele, Cyndi Lauper, Jason Mraz, and Alan Cumming. The venue closed in December 2012 due to a year-long renovation of the Regency Hotel. Feinstein subsequently opened Feinstein's at the Nikko in San Francisco in May 2013, and in 2015 entered a creative partnership with the founders of 54 Below, rebranding that venue as Feinstein's/54 Below until the partnership concluded in 2022.

In 2009, Feinstein collaborated with Cheyenne Jackson on a nightclub act titled The Power of Two, which also yielded a studio album of the same name. That year he also became artistic director of Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts. In 2010, PBS aired Michael Feinstein's American Songbook, a three-part television documentary tracing the history of American popular song through 1960 alongside Feinstein's own life and career. His memoir The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs, about his years working for Ira Gershwin, was published in fall 2012 accompanied by a CD of Feinstein performing the music discussed in the book. In April 2013, he released Change of Heart: The Songs of André Previn in collaboration with composer-conductor-pianist André Previn. On October 31, 2014, Michael Feinstein at the Rainbow Room premiered on PBS as part of the 2014 PBS Arts Fall Festival.

From 2012 to 2015, Feinstein hosted Song Travels with Michael Feinstein, a weekly one-hour radio program produced by South Carolina ETV Radio and distributed by NPR, exploring American popular songs of the twentieth century. He was named Principal Pops Conductor for the Pasadena POPS in 2012, made his conducting debut with the ensemble in June 2013, and had his contract extended through 2019 in 2016. Feinstein has also appeared multiple times on Turner Classic Movies, cohosting with Robert Osborne in January 2015 and returning as a guest host in August 2016 and December 2017. He has written scores for two stage musicals, The Night They Saved Macy's Parade and The Gold Room. Feinstein founded the Great American Songbook Foundation, initially named the Michael Feinstein Initiative, in 2007.