Michael Feinstein

Feinstein is a five-time Grammy-nominated recording artist. He is the founder of the Great American Songbook Foundation and the artistic director for Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana.

• Name — Michael Feinstein • Birth Name — Michael Jay Feinstein • Born — 7 September 1956 • Birthplace — Columbus, Ohio, U.S. • Died — YYYY MM DD • Spouse — Terrence Flannery • Instrument — Vocals, piano • Genre — The Great American Songbook • Occupation — Singer, pianist, music archivist • Years Active — 1977–present • Label — Nonesuch/Elektra Records, Concord Records • Website — michaelfeinstein.com

Feinstein was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Florence Mazie (née Cohen), an amateur tap dancer, and Edward Feinstein, a sales executive for the Sara Lee Corporation and a former amateur singer. Michael Feinstein is Jewish. At the age of five, he had piano lessons for six weeks until his tutor realised he was playing by ear instead of reading the sheet music. He quit lessons, thereafter taught himself.

After graduating from high school, Feinstein worked in local piano bars for two years, moving to Los Angeles when he was 20. Through the widow of concert pianist and actor Oscar Levant, he was introduced in 1977 to Ira Gershwin, who hired him to catalog his extensive collection of phonograph records. The assignment led to six years of researching, cataloging, and preserving the unpublished sheet music and rare recordings in Gershwin's home, Ira's works but also those of Ira's brother, composer George Gershwin. During Feinstein's years with Ira Gershwin, he also got to know Gershwin's next-door neighbor, singer Rosemary Clooney, with whom Feinstein formed a friendship lasting until Clooney's death. Feinstein served as musical consultant for the 1983 Broadway show My One and Only, a musical pastiche of Gershwin tunes. By the mid-1980s, Feinstein was a nationally known cabaret singer-pianist famed for being a proponent of the Great American Songbook. In 1986, he recorded his first CD, Pure Gershwin (1987), a collection of music by George and Ira Gershwin. That was followed by Live at the Algonquin (1986); Remember: Michael Feinstein Sings Irving Berlin (1987); Isn't It Romantic (1988), a collection of standards and his first album backed by an orchestra; and Over There (1989), featuring the music of America and Europe during World War I. Feinstein recorded Pure Imagination, his only children's album, in 1992. In the 1987 episode "But Not for Me" of the TV series thirtysomething, he sang "But Not for Me", "Love Is Here to Stay," and Isn't It Romantic?. By 1988, Feinstein was starring on Broadway in a series of in-concert shows: Michael Feinstein in Concert (April through June 1988), Michael Feinstein in Concert: "Isn't It Romantic" (October through November 1988), and Michael Feinstein in Concert: Piano and Voice (October 1990). He returned to Broadway in 2010, in a concert special duo with Dame Edna titled All About Me (March through April 2010). In 1991 his persona as a cabaret performer was parodied in the third season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which covered the Kaiju movie Gamera vs. Guiron. At the episode's close, Feinstein, played by the show's head writer Michael J. Nelson, sang a cabaret version of the Gamera theme song to the characters Dr. Clayton Forrester and TV's Frank. In the early 1990s, Feinstein embarked on a songbook project where he performed an album featuring the music of a featured composer, often accompanied by the composer. They included collaborations with Burton Lane (two volumes: 1990, 1992), Jule Styne (1991), Jerry Herman (Michael Feinstein Sings the Jerry Herman Songbook, 1993), Hugh Martin (1995), Jimmy Webb (Only One Life: The Songs of Jimmy Webb, 2003) and Jay Livingston/Ray Evans (2002). Feinstein also recorded three albums of standards with Maynard Ferguson: Forever (1993), Such Sweet Sorrow (1995), and Big City Rhythms (1999). In the late 1990s, Feinstein recorded two more albums of Gershwin music: Nice Work If You Can Get It: Songs by the Gershwins (1996) and Michael & George: Feinstein Sings Gershwin (1998). His albums in the 21st century include Romance on Film, Romance on Broadway (2000), Michael Feinstein with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (2001), Hopeless Romantics (2005, featuring George Shearing), and The Sinatra Project (2008). • Illustration — Michael Feinstein and Marvin Hamlisch performing a duet of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes," in April 2009.

Feinstein founded the Great American Songbook Foundation, first named the Michael Feinstein Initiative, in 2007. Today, the Songbook Foundation is housed in The Palladium at Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana. The organization is dedicated to the preservation, research, and exhibition of the physical artifacts of the Great American Songbook and educating about the music's relevance to contemporary culture. The organization maintains an archive and reference library and a rotating exhibit gallery, and announced in 2023 the plan to build a free-standing museum on a 3.7-acre site north of its current location. Feinstein has been a guest mentor of the Songbook Academy since its inception in 2009. The summer music intensive is hosted annually by the Great American Songbook Foundation and immerses high school students in America's musical heritage and fosters artistic identity through song. Feinstein is a contributor to the Songbook Library & Archives, which houses several archival collections of sheet music, musical arrangements, books, LPs and other music recording formats, memorabilia, photographs, videos, documents, and more. Since 2021, the Songbook Foundation publishes a web series titled "In the Archives with Michael Feinstein," where Feinstein hosts behind-the-scenes discussions with celebrity guests and archival experts about artifacts and collections housed in the Songbook Library & Archives.

In October 2008, Feinstein married his longtime partner Terrence Flannery. The ceremony was performed by family court and television judge Judith Sheindlin, also known as Judge Judy.

Michael Feinstein is recorded as singer, songwriter, music historian, archivist and pianist. Recorded at birth as Michael Jay Feinstein.