Michelle Featherstone

Michelle Featherstone is an British American indie singer-songwriter. Born in Chester, England, and raised in Cambridge, England, Featherstone now resides in Hollywood, California. She began studying piano and composing original music at the age of nine. She has received awards from the Royal Academy of Music for piano and violin and the Bishops Award for voice.

Career

Beginning

Featherstone didn’t initially intend to pursue a career in music. As an Art History major and Anthropology minor at West Chester University of Pennsylvania 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 trepidatious in spending money on the collection… it was frustrating mostly at times to work for them because of that reason. ”

After about 18 months at Disney’s Imagineering arm, Featherstone 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…

Success

Her songs have garnered attention in both film and television over the past few years. «Stay» has been featured on ABC’s Alias, FOX’s Wonderfalls 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 premiere episode of Aaron Spelling drama Summerland. Summerland also used «I Will Be Fine» later in the season and «All That I Want» featured in the premiere episode of NBC’s Las Vegas. A recent showcase of the Sundance Film Festival introduced Featherstone to several independent filmmakers, some of whom are using her music for upcoming projects. This past year, Featherstone has been working on various music projects in LA and the UK. «Project PI» by Al West features Featherstone singing her song «Please». The album will be released in Europe by the end of this year.

Featherstone is an active participant in the singer-songwriter community of Southern California, and has performed at clubs as diverse as the Whisky a Go Go, the Hotel Café, 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. Her newest single «Rest of My Life» has been featured on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and a Michelle Featherstone favorite, One Tree Hill in its past season.

She recorded the video «I’m There Too» as part of the soundtrack to the movie Peaceful Warrior.