About Michelle
Michelle was born in Beckenham, England. Something of a child prodigy she found the piano in the living room when she was three and never looked back! Lessons began with a neighbor and then at school coupled with guitar lessons. After moving to South Africa at 13, she continued piano and guitar studies, receiving her Bachelors Music degree from Cape Town University. During this time, she formed her first bands, playing locally as well as in the townships of Nyanga and Langa and at local music festivals.
Michelle returned to England in 1982 and became involved with the burgeoning classical guitar movement headed up by John Duarte. By the beginning of 1985, Michelle had crossed the pond and settled in New York City joining it's exciting music melting pot and studying at the legendary Jazzmobile where young jazz musicians studied with Jazz greats such as Ronnie Mathews, Billy Taylor, Sharon Freeman, Walter Bishop, Jimmy Heath, Frank Wess, Randy Wilson, Charlie Persip and Freddie Waits to name a few. It was a magical time for young Jazz musicians with Dizzy Gillespie and other Jazz luminaries keeping an avuncular eye on young jazz musicians learning at their knee and Michelle joined students who had travelled from all over the world to study and soak up the incredible musical soup that is New York. Many gigs locally and in Europe followed, performing and often wearing the Musical Director or Arranger hat as well as playing piano. Michelle has worked in many musical genres from performing Latin Montunos with Yomo Toro at SOB's in New York, playing with the inimitable R&B singer Gwen Guthrie, to unforgettable experiences touring with The Inkspots, The Marvelettes and Ben E. King as a neophyte pianist in New York City to recording with Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison, assisting John Cale with orchestrating "The Falkland Suite" - settings of Dylan Thomas poetry for voice and orchestra and assisting Herbie Hancock on arrangements for his mammoth tour with the Brecker Brothers promoting the Future Shock album.
Following the birth of her son in 1999, Michelle scaled back her busy schedule to focus on bringing up her son and moved to Cornwall last Spring so he could benefit from growing up here.
For more details about Michelle's work, check out these links:
- Pamela West Official Website
- “I Spent a Week There the Other Night” by Maureen Tucker
- Present Day Misconceptions About Bach Performance Practice in the Nineteenth Century (see footnote 1)
- “The Three Ecstasies” on OffOffOnline.com
- “Waiting for My Men” by Maureen Tucker