Michelle Culbertson, also known as Micaela Haley, is a versatile musician. Starting life out on the violin, Michelle then transformed herself into a lyric soprano. As a singer, she has recorded four studio albums, two for PianoDisc of Mason and Hamlin Pianos and two under the name Micaela Haley. She can be heard on her husband Jazz/funk artist Brian Culbertson’s albums as a singer, writer, producer and executive producer. Michelle has performed on many commercials singing the jingles for McDonalds, Nintendo and State Farm. Most recently she has played her violin on the theme song for the new live court t.v. drama known as Protection Court. A lover of languages, Michelle also speaks French, Italian with a dash of German.
Growing up just outside of Chicago, Michelle studied the violin with Amy McPartland, niece of famed jazz pianist Marian McPartland. Alongside her teacher who studied with Victor Aitay, concert master of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Michelle sat in on lessons and learned under Victor Aitay’s tutelage. By the age of sixteen, Michelle accumulated a studio comprised of twenty local young students, consistently performed as concert master and began winning local competitions. Michelle began playing professionally in local orchestras for productions of Handel’s Messiah, West Side Story and Bizet’s Carmen. As concert master she performed with the I.M.S.A orchestra, her high school orchestra and won Best Concert Master at The World Music Festival in Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 17. She performed with the Elgin Youth Symphony and participated in summer camps at University of Wisconsin, Madison and Illinois Wesleyan.
As a voice student under Chicago area pianist and voice teacher William E. Nelson, Michelle accumulated scholarships to four Universities and won The Park Forest Singers competition. She began performing with professional choirs and a local song and dance troupe that sent three singers to Broadway and Film. During Michelle’s Senior year of high school she performed a full length recital to a full concert hall to prepare for college.
At DePaul University in downtown Chicago, Michelle performed the roles of Antonia in The Tales of Hoffman, Lucy in The Telephone, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and The Countess in The Marriage of Figaro. During this time Cliff Colnot hired Michelle as a studio singer on commercials which put her into the Screen Actors Guild. He also brought Michelle back to perform Mahler’s Second Symphony as an alumnus. Under famed Mozart specialist and Opera Director, Harry Silverstein, Michelle studied acting privately which focused on the Stanislawski method.
While still at University, Michelle began singing in local opera houses. She performed Eileen in Wonderful Town for Light Opera Works, and understudied The Countess in the Merry Widow. She performed Barbarina for Dupage Opera’s Production of Le Nozze Di Figaro and was cast in the chorus for Chicago Opera Theater. While with Chicago Opera Theatre, Michelle was cast to understudy Zerlina in Don Giovanni and performed in the debut of Daron Hagen’s Shinning Brow. At Pamiro Opera in Madison, Wisconsin Michelle performed the role of Gretel two consecutive years in Hansel and Gretel.
After graduating from DePaul, Michelle headed to a small town in Italy called Urbania, to study Italian and music. Working with teachers from Manhattan School of Music and The Curtis Institute Michelle then found herself living in New York where she met Charlie Riecker, Artistic Director of The Met, who became her friend and mentor with whom she continued to study until his death.
Heading West to Los Angeles Michelle decided on voice teacher Jim Uselman of the Uselman/Klein studio which offered a different, more physical technique to the study of the voice. The method has seen Marilyn Horne pass through its doors as well as many of the old MGM Studio Hollywood singers of years past. While in Los Angeles Michelle embarked upon a recording career. PianoDisc, owned by Mason and Hamlin pianos, hired Michelle to sing and produce a broadway CD which was entitled Michelle Culbertson Sings Broadway Favorites with pianist and opera coach Bill Vendice of Los Angeles Opera. She then went onto record Be Still My Soul for PianoDisc a collaboration with her husband, jazz/funk pianist, Brian Culbertson and cellist David Low of the LA Phil, who improvised the cello line over the hymns with new arrangements by Brian Culbertson.
Los Angeles Opera sent Michelle on scholarship to Berlin to study German at the famed Goethe Institute. While in Germany Michelle lived with a musical family in Zehlendorf which put on neighborhood recitals. Eventually she ended up in Florence, Italy studying Italian at the Dante Alighieri school and privately with Cinzia Poli, translator of books from French into Italian. Eventually Michelle went onto Paris to study French at the Alliance de Francais and took cooking lessons at the Cordon Bleu and privately in a Parisian’s Home.
Michelle continued to return to New York City to work with both Denise Massé and Charlie Riecker of The Metropolitan Opera. Eventually Michelle began working on classical crossover music after hearing the distorted bass line on the Tori Amos’ album From the ChoirGirl Hotel. Michelle, soon to be Micaela, went into the recording studio with her husband and began messing around with the bass line in Carmen’s Habanera. RCA Classical along with RCA Pop and Sony Japan brought Michelle in to sign a record deal. 2008 happened and so both RCA Pop and Sony Japan folded during the recession. (Thank you big corporate America)
Both Brian and Michelle then turned their sites on starting a Jazz Festival in Napa Valley which Michelle named The Napa Valley Jazz Getaway. Since then Michelle and Brian started The Chicago Jazz Getaway now in its third year.
Michelle produced Brian’s piano on Another Long Night Out and executive produced his latest record XX. She has composed the song Come Away on her CD entitled Syren under the name Micaela Haley and went on to do an album of remixes under the same name. Michelle also composed the song Last Night on Brian’s album Come On Up with trumpet player Rick Braun as soloist. Her voice can be heard on many of Brian’s tracks and soloed on the song Some Children See Him on the album A Soulful Christmas.
Recently, Michelle began learning the cello, a lifelong dream and continues to study languages. Her hobbies include reading the philosophers Satre, Simone De Beauvoir and most recently Søren Kierkegaard. She considers herself an existentialist with a dash of the absurdist; hence, she also reads Albert Camus. Erich Fromm is also a favorite author. Her curiosity about life during the Cold War has found her nose in many books about the History of propaganda and its many uses in controlling a society. Social Media eludes her so you will rarely see her on there, subsequently she has been called the snow leopard. Martial Arts has always been of interest so she began studying boxing which then turned into earning a 4th degree belt in Kali/Wing Chun under 5th Dan, Sensei Ben Brown in Los Angeles. Michelle has also studied under professional MMA fighter Thor Skancke of Tarzana Boxing. As an avid boxer, she was happy to learn that Jean Paul Sartre was also an avid boxer along with Ernest Hemingway, another favorite. Finally, she has recently become a certified yoga teacher upon completing her 200hours this past summer and is now registered with the Yoga Alliance.
Michelle is an audiophile and you can find her listening to jazz out of Europe. Ibrahim Maalouf, Danielle Mille, Anouar Brahem can be heard coming from her Fiio and Focal headphones because smart phones sound like garbage.