Emmerald: What projects have you worked on with King?
Michelle Shaprow: We've done a track called "Angel," and he released "Anything You Say," which is a track I did with Jay Denes from Naked Music that King released on his Five Six label. We're starting on a couple of new tracks that we're working on now for my full-length album.
Emmerald: Is your work with Rich Medina and Satoshi Tomiie mainly vocal or do you co-write too?
Michelle Shaprow: I do both, vocals and co-writing. With Satoshi, we went to the studio he played a track and he had a line for me. I sang a couple of different ways without words, just kind of scatting and from there he gave me some ideas of what he was looking for. We settled on the vibe and then I brought the track home and then lived with it for a little bit before I started writing the lyrics and the music.
Emmerald: How is your album work with King shaping up?
Michelle Shaprow: It's kind of difficult to describe. It's influenced by a lot of different things like neo soul, soft funk, dance, electro and a lot of like classic songwriting styles like Jobim, Gershwin and Cole Porter. It's all across the board but we're not really like thinking about the genre as we write. We just sort of do it.
Emmerald: Do you have a projected release date?
Michelle Shaprow: Whenever it's done. And they're so busy too, it's like we don't literally get it off and like once a month, once every two months.
Emmerald: You attended Yale University and recently graduated from there. What did you study there?
Michelle Shaprow: I studied psychology and philosophy and I specialized in music cognition and perception. My thesis was on why we like the music we like.
Emmerald: What was your theory?
Michelle Shaprow: In music or media in general, we're always drawn to a combination of opposite forces trying to balance oppositional elements. If you have like a certain amount of dissonance, you are going to have to compensate it by the amount of consonance. But the compensations don't necessarily have to take place with the direct parallels. Like you could have, you could have dissonance compensated by familiarity or something else.
Emmerald: Do you think you will pursue a career in psychology? Do you think you would combine that with music as you did for your thesis?
Michelle Shaprow: Yes, I will combine the two in writing and analysis, but I'm not really interested in being a psychologist. I think already bring it to the work I do in music and the media in general. I look at things through that type of lens. But I'm really into making music and media and having fun and being creative.
Emmerald: Do you think you do any more musicals in the future?
Michelle Shaprow: I would love to. I would love the next musical I do to be a musical film. So that's something I have to work towards, build those types of relationships and have that type of reputation to be able to pull it off the way I want to do it.
Emmerald: Have you done live performances and if so, what are they like?
Michelle Shaprow: I just did a show at Joe's Pub in New York, just last month on my birthday and that was really fun, and I'm starting to do shows at New Glue which is the Brazilian Girls' venue. I do a retro thing with background dancers and long clothes, so it's kind of theatrical. I also do acoustic sets with me on the piano. That's mostly for my ballads, but for some of the dance tracks, CD tracks playing at the same time as the band playing drums, bass and keyboards with us singing. It's a combination of electronic prerecorded stuff and live elements.
Emmerald: Where do you see dance music going over the next few years? Even though you've been doing music forever, you are relatively young, so I'm wondering if that gives you a different perspective at all.
Michelle Shaprow: I hope that there's a lot of genre blending. One of the reasons I'm drawn to 'dance music' is that there is more freedom than in a lot of the more like homogenized forms of music. Dance music can be underground and it can fill the boundaries. You have a freedom in dance music that you don't have in other forms of music. I hope that dance music takes the direction of even more freedom and even more artistry. I hope that chords start to be incorporated more in the music, beautiful and rich and lush chords, and that there's more experimentation.
Emmerald: As a dance artist out there right now, what advice do you have to other dance artists out there?
Michelle Shaprow: Perform out a lot and hone their craft to record different kinds of music.
Emmerald: How can people find out more about you and what you are doing?
Michelle Shaprow: Definitely check out the Coke commercial. Check out my website www.michelleshaprow.com. Check out my up and coming tracks that we've talked about, and check out my tracks on I-Tunes.
