Ingrid Michaelson

All Music Guide:

With her piano-fueled songwriting, witty wordplay, and slight vocal vibrato, Ingrid Michaelson carries the tradition of the female singer/songwriter into the 21st century. Befitting a musician of the digital age, Michaelson first gained wide exposure through spots on TV soundtracks, including Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill. Born and raised on New York's Staten Island to an artist mother and classical composer father, she began exploring music through piano lessons at the age of four. After college, she toured with a national theater troupe and spent her free time writing songs, later compiling them into an online-distributed recording entitled Slow the Rain.

Michaelson blazed her own trail by independently issuing her proper debut, the engaging Girls and Boys, in 2006; following the inclusion of her music in several episodes of Grey's Anatomy, she then released a remastered version of the album on her own Cabin 24 Records in January 2007. Three months later, she won a national songwriting contest sponsored by Mountain Stage, a radio program produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting and distributed worldwide. "The Way I Am" was then picked up by Old Navy, who used it to soundtrack one of their clothing commercials, and Michaelson began making headlines as one of the country's most promising independent artists. A benefit project comprised of live recordings, new songs, and rarities, Be OK was released in 2008. Michaelson joined the Hotel Cafe Tour that fall in support of the album, whose proceeds went toward cancer research, and later toured Europe alongside Jason Mraz.

For her "proper" follow-up to Girls and Boys, Ingrid Michaelson retreated to a Manhattan studio alongside producer Dan Romer. 40 newly composed songs were whittled down to a total of 12, with more emphasis being paid to the songwriter's peppier material. Featuring a string section on several songs, 2009's Everybody proved to be Michaelson's most expansive, confident effort to date, and she followed its release with another cross-country fall tour.

Wikipedia:

Ingrid Ellen Egbert Michaelson (born December 8, 1979) is a New York-based indie-pop singer-songwriter. Her music has been featured in episodes of several popular television shows, including Scrubs, Bones, Grey's Anatomy The Big C, In Plain Sight, and One Tree Hill, as well as in Old Navy's fall 2007 Fair Isle and Opel's/Vauxhall's Meriva 2010 advertising campaigns.

Biography

Michaelson was born to artistic parents. Her father is a composer and her mother is a sculptor. Michaelson took up piano at age four, and trained until seven at Manhattan's Third Street Music School, continuing for many more years at the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island's Dorothy Delson Kuhn Music Institute. While there she met vocal coach Elizabeth McCullough, who worked with her through high school. She is a graduate of Staten Island Technical High School and Binghamton University, where she received a degree in theater. While at Binghamton University she was a member of the Binghamtonics, a co-ed a cappella group, as well as the Pappy Parker Players, an improv comedy group, and the theatre repertory company under Sue Peters. Her time at Binghamton is mentioned in the song "The Hat". She grew up doing a musical theater group called "Kids On Stage". Later in life, she became a director until she decided to pursue her career in music.

Toward the end of 2008, she opened for Jason Mraz on his European tour, touring in the UK, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and France among others. In the second half of 2009, Ingrid began her "Everybody" tour of the United States and Europe which continued in 2010.

In 2010 Ingrid was engaged to fellow artist Greg Laswell. They are married, which the singer acknowledged on her Twitter on January 16, 2012.

Appearances and performances

Television and radio

Other appearances

Songs featured in television series

Grey's Anatomy

One Tree Hill

Other series

Songs featured in films

Songs featured in commercials

Collaborations

In 2006, Ingrid teamed up with William Fitzsimmons on his album Goodnight, which was released that same year.

Ingrid and her friend Sara Bareilles co-wrote "Winter Song" which was featured on The Hotel Café Presents Winter Songs, a compilation of both original recordings as well as classic holiday tracks sung by a lineup of female singer-songwriters. Ingrid also worked with Bareilles, performing "Winter Song" for the President Obama and his family as well as many spectators at the National Christmas Tree Lighting in December 2010. In 2011, "Winter Song" reached number 2 on the Irish Singles Chart.

Ingrid provided back-up vocals on two songs from PlayRadioPlay!'s album Texas, including "I'm a Pirate, You're a Princess" and the title track, "Texas".

Ingrid provided back-up vocals on Greg Laswell's album, Take A Bow, which was released on May 4, 2010. Collaboration was done on the songs "Take Everything," "My Fight (For You)," and "Come Clean."

Ingrid's band includes Allie Moss and Bess Rogers on guitar, who are singer/songwriters in their own right. Allie Moss released a 2009 EP entitled Passerby. A single from the EP, "Corner", has been picked up by BT for their BT Infinity television commercials in the UK. Other band members include Chris Kuffner (Bass), husband of Bess Rogers(Guitar), Saul Simon-MacWilliams (keys) and Elliot Jacobson (drums).

In 2010, Ingrid co-wrote a song entitled "Parachute" with Marshall Altman which was covered by singer Cheryl Cole on her debut solo album 3 Words; it hit number 5 in the UK. Ingrid initially felt the track was "so poppy" that she could not release it herself. However, after the song was reworked by "Everybody" producer Dan Romer to make a more "interesting, funky production", Ingrid released the song as a personal single. To date, the song has received two separate music videos.

Of the release of "Parachute" and upcoming material, Ingrid explained in a 2010 interview with Billboard.com, "I just felt like I wanted to put something out. I'm not ready to put a full album out, so we thought we'd put this out and see how people take it or don't take it," saying that she expects to release her next album, "probably in the middle of next year."