Feinstein, Michael

MICHAEL FEINSTEIN

Born: Columbus, Ohio, 7 September 1956

Genre: Vocal

Best-selling album since 1990: Romance on Film, Romance on Broadway (2000)

Michael Feinstein was a pioneer among a younger generation of interpreters who have devoted themselves to preserving and proliferating the art of the classic American popular song. With his boyish good looks, warm smile, and gentle personality, Feinstein helped launch a resurgence of interest during the late 1980s and early 1990s in what many had considered a dying art form. Feinstein's extraordinary success has not only inspired many others of his generation to become successful torch singers, but it also did much to rekindle the fading careers of singing stars who had originally been popular during the era of standards. Even contemporary pop stars no longer able to sustain audience interest with their own material now routinely boost sagging careers by turning to American classic popular songs.

The only child of a tap-dancing mother and a barbershop-quartet-singing father, Feinstein began playing piano by ear at the age of five. As a boy he spent hours at a time singing and playing standards he picked up off old 78-rpm records. While his peers were being weaned on the rock and roll of the British Invasion of the 1960s, the Feinstein home was filled with the music of the great American songwriters of yesteryear such as the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Jerome Kern.

When the family moved to the Los Angeles suburb of Canoga Park in the mid-1970s, Feinstein sought out June Levant, the widow of the great Gershwin pianist Oscar Levant, and in 1977 she introduced him to Ira Gershwin himself. For the next six years, until the legendary lyricist's death in 1983, Feinstein immersed himself in the world of the composer/brother songwriting team that he had always idolized: George and Ira Gershwin. While cataloging Gershwin records, music, and memorabilia, and also acting as Ira's surrogate in matters pertaining to the publication and/or performance of Gershwin works, Feinstein nurtured his calling to preserve the legacy of the Gershwins and their songwriting contemporaries.

Taking his first job as a cabaret pianist in a lounge, Feinstein immediately clashed with the owner about modernizing his repertoire. Gently but firmly sticking to his guns, Feinstein asked for one week for the word to get out about his performances of the classic standards. Word did spread, and a big break came when Feinstein was invited to play at a party hosted by Liza Minnelli. That success led to a triumphant 1986 New York debut at the Algonquin Hotel, which paved the way for Feinstein's one-man Broadway show Isn't It Romantic? (1988).

Along with Feinstein's own best-selling recordings and a string of television appearances as both performer and actor, his most valuable contribution to preserving the art of the American popular song has been his series of recorded songbooks, which feature legendary song composers accompanying him at the piano in performances of their own music.

The Gershwin centennial saw Feinstein releasing his third all-Gershwin disc, Michael & George: Feinstein Sings Gershwin (1998), which includes a performance of a "lost" number from Porgy and Bess (1935), the lullaby "Lonely Boy," discarded before the show's opening. It also afforded Feinstein the opportunity to perform Gershwin's biggest hit, "Swanee" (1919), to the accompaniment of Gershwin himself via piano roll. The September 26, 1998, centennial was the occasion of Feinstein's all-Gershwin concert with a fifty-piece symphony orchestra at the Chicago Theatre, a favorite Gershwin venue before his untimely, sudden death at the age of thirty-eight from a brain hemorrhage during surgery in 1937.

Feinstein's longtime ambition to co-own his own intimate New York City nightclub was realized with the opening of his At the Regency in 1999, a 130-seat Park Avenue showcase for himself and other performers who share Feinstein's devotion to the American standard.

Neither Feinstein's piano technique nor his vocalizing ability is particularly memorable; some find his interpretations banal. Others defend his unadorned approach, his classic repertoire to speak for itself without artistic excess. Yet through his enthusiasm and anecdotes, Feinstein has an uncanny ability to make even an arena audience feel as if he is singing personally to each member in his or her own living room.

The appeal and acceptance of Michael Feinstein remains now what it was from the beginning of his career. Older listeners are blissfully reminded of that musically fertile era of America's cultural past when the nation's best songwriters wrote for the nation's best singers. Likewise, younger listeners, weaned on performers who are expected to be simultaneously singers and songwriters, receive a first taste of an elegant, bygone era where each role was clearly and magnificently delineated, affording each a unique degree of perfection.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Michael Feinstein Live at the Algonquin (Elektra, 1987); Michael Feinstein Sings Irving Berlin (Elektra, 1987); Isn't It Romantic? (Elektra, 1988); The MGM Album (Elektra, 1989); Michael Feinstein Sings the Burton Lane Songbook, Vol. I (Nonesuch, 1990); Michael Feinstein Sings the Jule Styne Songbook (Nonesuch, 1991); Michael Feinstein Sings the Burton Lane Songbook, Vol. II (Nonesuch, 1993); Michael Feinstein Sings the Hugh Martin Songbook (Nonesuch, 1995); Nice Work If You Can Get It: Songs from the Gershwins (None-such, 1996); George & Michael: Feinstein Sings Gershwin (Concord, 1998); Big City Rhythms, with the Maynard Ferguson Big Band (Concord, 1999); The Michael Feinstein Anthology (2 discs, Rhino, 2002); Michael Feinstein with the Israel Philharmonic (Concord, 2002); Livingston & Evans Songbook (Nonesuch, 2002).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

M. Feinstein, Nice Work if You Can Get It: My Life in Rhythm and Rhyme (New York, 1995).

WEBSITE:

www.michaelfeinstein.com.

dennis polkow