Michelle Shafer

'Featured Artist...11/August/2023...Michelle Shafer'

Michelle Shafer is a Chicago based multidisciplinary artist: singer songwriter, guitarist, poet, fine craft artist, co owner/partner at Q3 Art, mother and wife, living with a rare cancer she refers to as a cellular imbalance.

She describes her musical identity as that of a "singer songwriter poet" with guitar skills. Her guitar arrangements have been described as a framework for her voice. Her playing is worldly and directly flavored by folk/rock, classical guitar, and traditional finger style. She mostly writes using nylon string and steel string guitars and sometime piano. Recently she's added ukulele!

Her lyrics touch on subjects of love in it's many forms, spirit, time, life's purpose, hope and loss. Eclectic but always authentic, her work speaks from and to the heart, resonating with a voice that has been described as mesmerizing, transporting and beautiful. She believes songs are happenings. As a creative, she feels they are pulled out of the realm just beyond and she is the fortunate conduit that brings the "work" into the tangible. She affirms there is a creative force that drives her and is beyond her. Her genres she writes in lie in the constructs but not limited to Chamber Pop, Indie Rock. Chamber Folk, Americana and Jazz.

Michelle just released Scattered Light, on July 21, 2023, an 11 song project. Many of the songs were written and recorded during the pandemic lock down. Stranger and Scattered light were the first songs that came and in fact they were a direct reaction to the uncommon quiet of the city and the seclusion. The themes for the most part touch on love in various forms. The pandemic lockdown was laced with gifts of time and creativity. Michelle and her producer, Brian Leach, used the opportunity to push the art. She turned her self into a choir on Inscribe These Words, The Stranger and Scattered light in her own in her home studio and others.

She was a featured Artist at Poetry on The Green September 2022 put on by Chicago Poetry Center.

Michelle has had several multi disciplinary projects with dancers at Chicago Danze Theatre Ensemble:

Wax, Body Passages Festival, October 2018 a collaboration with poet Jae Green and dancer, Carly Broutman.

Poetry by Jae Green and music/lyrics composed by Michelle Shafer.

Opens Wings, Women in Response Festival March 2018 Open Wings is a performance piece with dance, music, poetry, and imagery about the rise of a woman's wisdom through out her life. Music, lyrics and poetry written, composed and performed by Michelle Shafer.

Love, Loss and Longing,(AKA, Heart Knows) Heart Knows Festival October 2015. A dance triptych .Three kinds of love love for God/spirit, family, and passionate forbidden love. Music/lyrics composed by Michelle Shafer.

Featured musician live pre show for Piece of My Heart May 2016.

Many of her songs have been included on Woman of Substance Radio Podcast from 2018-2023. Michelle has appeared on WVLP Arts on the Air in 2020 and 2021. She was featured on WVLP Radio's The Music Box January 2018. WIMS Roxy Music Showcase in 2014 and in 2016.

She continues writing songs and recording new tracks with her Chicago based producer, Brian Leach.