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.[1] He is Jewish. At the age of 5, he studied piano for a couple of months until his teacher became angered that he was not reading the sheet music she gave him, since he was more comfortable playing by ear. As his mother saw no problem with her son's method, she took him out of lessons and allowed him to enjoy music his own way.[5]
Career
After graduating from high school, Feinstein worked in local piano bars for two years, moving to Los Angeles when he was age 20. Through the widow of concert pianist-actor Oscar Levant, he was introduced in 1977 to Ira Gershwin, who hired him to catalogue his extensive collection of phonograph records. The assignment led to six years of researching, cataloguing and preserving the unpublished sheet music and rare recordings in Gershwin's home, Ira's works but also those of his composer brother George Gershwin. During Feinstein's years with 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. He followed this with 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 the First World War. 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).[6]
Feinstein teamed with Cheyenne Jackson in 2009 to create a nightclub act titled "The Power of Two". The show was hailed by The New York Times as "passionate", "impeccably harmonized" and "groundbreaking".[9]Variety acclaimed it as "dazzlingly entertaining".[10] Their act became one of the most critically acclaimed shows of 2009,[11][12][13] and the duo created a studio album from the material, titled The Power of Two, and it included their cover of the Indigo Girls song of the same name.
In 2010, PBS aired Michael Feinstein's American Songbook, a three-part television documentary that depicts the history of the American popular song up to 1960 as well as Feinstein's own life and career.[14]
As of June 2011, Feinstein has written the score for two new stage musicals, The Night They Saved Macy's Parade and The Gold Room.[15]
His Manhattan nightclub, Feinstein's at Loews Regency New York, presented the top talent of pop and jazz from 1999 to 2012, including Rosemary Clooney, Liza Minnelli, Glen Campbell, Barbara Cook, Diahann Carroll, Jane Krakowski, Lea Michele, Cyndi Lauper, Jason Mraz and Alan Cumming. The club was closed in December 2012 due to a year-long complete renovation of the Regency Hotel. Feinstein opened the nightclub Feinstein's at the Nikko in San Francisco's Nikko Hotel in May 2013. In 2015, he entered into a creative partnership with the founders of 54 Below, located in the basement of New York's Studio 54, and they rebranded the nightclub Feinstein's/54 Below until their partnership ended in 2022.[16]
From 2012 to 2015, Feinstein was the host of the weekly, one-hour radio program Song Travels with Michael Feinstein, produced by South Carolina ETV Radio and distributed by NPR. On the program, Feinstein explored the legendary songs of 20th century America. The series surveys the passage of American popular song throughout the American landscape, evolving with each artist and performance.[17]
Feinstein was named Principal Pops Conductor for the Pasadena POPS in 2012 and made his conducting debut in June 2013. In 2016, Feinstein's contract with the Pasadena POPS was extended through 2019.[18]
Feinstein's memoir The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs about working for Ira Gershwin was published in Fall 2012, accompanied by a CD of Feinstein's performing the Gershwin brothers' music discussed in the book.[19]
In April 2013, Feinstein released Change Of Heart: The Songs of André Previn, (Concord) in collaboration with composer-conductor-pianist André Previn, with an album celebrating Previn's repertoire from his catalog of pop songs that have most commonly been featured in motion pictures. The album opens with "(You've Had) a Change of Heart".
On October 31, 2014, Feinstein's Michael Feinstein at the Rainbow Room premiered on PBS, with guest stars. The special is part of the 2014 PBS Arts Fall Festival, a primetime program with 11 weekly programs of classic Broadway hits and music as well as some award-winning theater performances.
Feinstein has appeared numerous times as a presenter on Turner Classic Movies. After cohosting with Robert Osborne for a night in January 2015, he returned to the channel as a guest host in August 2016 and December 2017.
Great American Songbook Foundation
See article: Great American Songbook Foundation Feinstein founded the Great American Songbook Foundation, first named the Michael Feinstein Initiative, in 2007. Today, the Songbook Foundation is housed in the 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.[20]
Feinstein has been a guest mentor of the Songbook Academy since its inception in 2009.[21] 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.[22]
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.[23]
Personal life
In October 2008, Feinstein married his longtime partner Terrence Flannery.[24] The ceremony was performed by family court and television judge Judith Sheindlin, also known as Judge Judy.[25] Feinstein and Flannery have homes in New York, Los Angeles, and Indiana.
Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs in the English language of the 20th century. With George, he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as "I Got Rhythm", "Embraceable You", "The Man I Love", and "Someone to Watch Over Me". He was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to George's opera Porgy and Bess.
André George Previn was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved success, and the latter two were part of his life until the end. In movies, he arranged and composed music. In jazz, he was a celebrated trio pianist, a piano-accompanist to singers of standards, and pianist-interpreter of songs from the "Great American Songbook". In classical music, he also performed as a pianist but gained television fame as a conductor, and during his last thirty years created his legacy as a composer of art music.
Sandra Faye "Sandi" Patty is an American Christian music singer, known for her wide soprano vocal range and expressive flexibility.
The Great American Songbook is the loosely defined canon of significant 20th-century American jazz standards, popular songs, and show tunes.
Sylvia McNair is an American opera singer and classical recitalist who has also achieved notable success in the Broadway and cabaret genres. McNair, a soprano, has made several critically acclaimed recordings and has won two Grammy Awards.
Ann Hampton Callaway is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and actress. She wrote and sang the theme song for the TV series The Nanny.
Orfeh is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She performed at the Lincoln Center's American Songbook Series in 2016, and in the Broadway musicals Saturday Night Fever, Legally Blonde, and Pretty Woman.
Jeff Harnar is an American cabaret singer and recording artist.
Russ Lorenson is an American singer and actor. Though a stage actor since childhood, since the mid-2000s Lorenson has established a reputation as an interpreter of jazz standards. With a retro crooner style, Lorenson's sound and approach are an amalgam of Broadway, jazz, and pop.
"I've Got a Crush on You" is a song composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It is unique among Gershwin compositions in that it was used for two different Broadway productions: Treasure Girl (1928), when it was introduced by Clifton Webb and Mary Hay, and Strike Up the Band (1930), when it was sung by Doris Carson and Gordon Smith. It was later included in the tribute musical Nice Work If You Can Get It (2012), in which it was sung by Jennifer Laura Thompson. When covered by Frank Sinatra he was a part of Columbia Records.
The discography for American jazz singer Michael Feinstein.
Marilyn Maye McLaughlin is an American singer, musical theater actress and masterclass educator. With a career spanning eight decades, Maye has performed music in the styles of cabaret, jazz and pop music. She has received one nomination from the Grammy Awards and had commercial success as a recording artist.
The Palladium at Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts is 1,500-seat, 151,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) concert hall located in Carmel, Indiana.
The Great American Songbook Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the music of the Great American Songbook. The Songbook Foundation's administrative offices and Songbook Exhibit Gallery are located on the Gallery level of The Palladium at Allied Solutions Center for Performing Arts, a 1,600-seat concert hall in Carmel, Indiana, that opened in January 2011. The Songbook Library & Archives are housed offsite nearby.
"Stairway to Paradise", also known as "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise", is a song composed in 1922 by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Buddy DeSylva for the Broadway revue George White's Scandals. Popular recordings in 1922–23 were by Carl Fenton; Paul Whiteman; and by Ben Selvin.
Maxine Therese Linehan is an Irish and American singer-songwriter and stage actress. Born in Newry, Northern Ireland, she performed as Nancy in Oliver! in the UK, touring it in Ireland and England with the Irish Operatic Repertory Company. Her job as a barrister in London took her to New York City in 2001, and six years later, she created an autobiographical show, So Far... which garnered her her first MAC Award nomination. In 2008, she co-founded the Alloy Theater Company with Michelle Pruett and starred in its production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's song cycle Tell Me on a Sunday, Jacqueline McCarrick's The Mushroom Pickers, and the company' first off-Broadway production, William Luce's Brontë: A Portrait of Charlotte.
Rob Fisher is an American music director, conductor, arranger and pianist. He was the founding music director and conductor of the New York City Center Encores! series from 1994 to 2005. He is the leader of the Coffee Club Orchestra, which was the house band for Garrison Keillor’s radio broadcasts from 1989 to 1993.
Steven Richard Ross is an American cabaret singer and pianist, known for his interpretations of the Great American Songbook, particularly the music of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Noël Coward. He is a revivalist of popular compositions from the early-to-mid 20th century, including ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, show tunes, musical theatre and patter songs. Ross has been dubbed "the Crown Prince of Cabaret", and his personal style described as "the epitome of sophisticated 'cafe' cabaret". Regarding his interpretations of Cole Porter, fellow cabaret pianist Michael Feinstein noted that Ross has, "an ability to create a reserve or an 'arch' quality that certain of his songs require and that eludes" other performers.
André George Previn, was a German-American pianist, conductor, and composer. Previn won four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings.
John Frank Oddo was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He is most notably associated as pianist and musical director for Woody Herman, Rosemary Clooney and Michael Feinstein.
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![<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Palladium at the Center for the Performing Arts</span> Concert hall in [[Carmel, Indiana]], [[United States]]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/The_Palladium_Exterior.jpg/320px-The_Palladium_Exterior.jpg)
