DIANE MICHAELS is a professional harpist and writer. Her career has taken her from Carnegie Hall to the wedding hall (she has played at least 1000 weddings). She has performed with the Orchestra of St. Peter by the Sea since 1993, has played on Broadway for the show “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and with the Allentown Symphony, Capital Philharmonic, Queens Symphony, Metro Lyric Opera, the New York Verismo Opera Company, RTG Productions, the Garden State Philharmonic and the Monmouth Symphony. She has also performed with artists including Tony Bennett, Judy Collins, and Donny Osmond, and was a member of the All American College Orchestra at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Center.
Ms. Michaels has played aboard the QE2 and the Seven Seas Navigator and has performed at many New York metropolitan hotels and restaurants, including the Plaza Hotel, the Rainbow Room, the St. Regis, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Central Park South, and the Hilton at Short Hills.
Ms. Michaels is on the roster of Music for all Seasons, a non-profit organization. Through their auspices, she performs at numerous facilities such as hospitals and shelters for victims of domestic abuse. She has toured with the New York Harp Ensemble in the United States and Italy and with the Paulson Harp Ensemble in New Jersey and Ireland. Ms. Michaels was a Masterwork Music and Arts Foundation Young Artist Recitalist and a four-time gold medalist in the harp division of the United Irish Counties of New York, Inc. Feis. As a winner of this competition, she appeared in the winners’ concert at Carnegie Recital Hall.
A former member of the board of the American Harp Society, she is on the editorial board of the American Harp Journal. In addition to maintaining a private teaching studio, Ms. Michaels is on the faculty of the Wharton Music Center in Berkeley Heights. She also has published arrangements for solo harp and harp ensemble, a book for beginning harp students, and has authored over twenty works of fiction.
Ms. Michaels received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music where she studied harp with Alice Chalifoux. She attended Interlochen Arts Academy as a student of Joan Holland and National Music Camp, both in Interlochen, Michigan, the Salzedo Harp Colony in Camden, Maine, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. She lives in NJ with her husband, bassist Kevin Brown and a miniature poodle named Lola.