Michael FeinsteinBirth Chart

Michael Feinstein is an American singer, pianist, and musical researcher known for his dedication to the Great American Songbook repertoire. He became notable while working as an archivist for Ira Gershwin in the late 1970s, a role that placed him at the center of preserving and interpreting scores, recordings, and rare materials from the canon of American popular music. In the following decades he built a career as a cabaret performer and as a leader of editorial and recording projects: he released a series of thematic albums devoted to composers such as George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jule Styne, and Jimmy Webb, and received multiple Grammy nominations. In 1988 he was given a Drama Desk Special Award in recognition of his celebration of American musical theatre. Feinstein also worked as an institutional curator and cultural entrepreneur: he founded the Great American Songbook Foundation, ran nightclubs such as Feinstein’s in New York and San Francisco, and held positions including artistic director of the Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts and Principal Pops Conductor of the Pasadena POPS. His work combines performance, preservation, and dissemination, leaving a significant legacy for the maintenance and reappraisal of twentieth‑century American popular music.