Michael is a Grammy Award-winning engineer for his work recording and mixing Dianne Reeves’ A Little Moonlight (Best Jazz Vocal Album, 2003). Michael is also the mixer/engineer of 11 Grammy Award-winning albums and 6 Grammy Award-nominated albums, as well as 15 Platinum, 19 Gold, and 8 Multi-Platinum records. Simply put, most of us have heard the familiar sounds he's captured. Take for instance the Prince song “I Feel for You,” recorded by Chaka Kahn, or the very first single, “You Give Good Love,” from Whitney Houston's debut album, Whitney Houston.
Michael began his career at New York's legendary Atlantic Records Recording Studios as an assistant engineer where he honed his craft. He gained experience working with a range of mega artists – from The Rolling Stones, Bette Midler, Average White Band, George Carlin, and James Taylor to Aretha Franklin and Charles Mingus.
Michael had the distinguished honor of working alongside legendary Producer Arif Mardin on virtually all of Arif's projects over the last 30 years. Michael was credited as a producer on Bette Midler's album Bathhouse Betty and is an associate producer on Arif Mardin's All My Friends Are Here album.
As a recording engineer, Michael has worked in a wide variety of musical genres, which include: pop, rock, R&B, jazz, blues, Broadway, original film soundtracks, and film and television scores, making him feel at home recording either a 60-piece orchestra or a lone blues guitar. He has worked with a roster of artists as diverse as Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, The Bee Gees, Bette Midler, David Bowie, Modern Jazz Quartet, Smashing Pumpkins, Los Lonely Boys, Jewel, Raul Midon, Queen Latifah, Eric Clapton, and Matisyahu, to name a few.
Recent activities: Michael entered the world of television where he’s already lent his audio engineering services as music sub mixer, Pro Tools engineer, post-production engineer, sound EFX engineer, and music mix engineer to several broadcast television shows such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS), The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS), Saturday Night Live (NBC), Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC), and ABC's The Chew. He has also diversified his skill set by becoming a post-production engineer for CBS Television. Michael is also an adjunct instructor of Music Engineering at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts – The Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, ESRA Film School of New York, and NYU Steinhardt’s Music Technology program.