Michael Gettel (born Oct. 18, 1958) is a recording artist, composer, and pianist, who has been creating, teaching, and performing music for decades.
His parents were committed completely to offering every musical opportunity to him, while at the same time, his sister Sharon excelled in classical ballet.
This experience evoked Gettel's love for travel, and throughout his years as a music educator, he led international trips to England, Scotland and France for students from the Bush School in Seattle.
The experience of being secluded in the wilderness – as well as visits to one of his most sublime inspiration sites, Mesa Verde – gave Gettel the incentive to capture the landscapes in his music.
He also traveled to Washington State’s Puget Sound region in the summers to boat in the San Juan Islands with friend and-soon-to-be label partner Mathew Dimarco.
Concerts and appearances throughout the region were numerous, and as the word grew through tourists and boaters, more small businesses sought out the recording, creating a supply-and-demand crisis.
The release was welcomed by a few large independent distributors, and subsequently sold several hundreds of thousands of albums with no major label involvement.
Gettel was intent on broadening his musical palette with his second release, “Intricate Balance,” which featured his first forays into arranging for other acoustic instruments (specifically oboe), and new experiments with electronic keyboards and percussion.
Recorded again at Kaye-Smith Studios (which soon became Heart's Bad Animals) and mixed in Denver, “Return” showcased Gettel not only as a maturing composer, arranger and producer, but as a new formidable figure in the New Age movement.
Ultimately, the decision was made to dissolve Sounding Records in favor of taking the risk with a larger label that had more presence in the market and more ability to promote internationally.
Gettel solidified his contract with Narada while on a backpacking trip to the American Southwest with students from Seattle's Bush School, at which he had accepted a teaching position in 1988.
Throughout the summer, Gettel travelled from Seattle to Portland to consult with Oskay, and began recording in August at Desitrek Studios.
With Sandin Wilson and Nancy Rumbel returning as significant contributors to the album's full palette, they were joined by guitarist Paul Speer on several tracks and a spontaneous visit by David Lanz, which turned into the compelling improvised duet of “First Snow.” An additional new expert arrived in engineer Frank Bry, who would work with Gettel on all his major Narada releases throughout the '90s.
The studio was a well-known location among Seattle musicians, and was moving forward to develop into a much larger campus that later would serve local and world acts such as Nirvana, Dave Matthews, Foo Fighters, among many other A-list artists.
The arranging and instrumentation stretched Gettel's musical boundaries and the studio's capabilities at the time, with a few tracks overreaching the limits of the mixing board.
Initially, Narada had a hands-off approach to the concept, but Gettel was undeterred, and flew to the label offices in Milwaukee, Wis., to consult with CEO Wesley Van-Linda.
The final result yielded several radio-friendly singles, including “Breaking The Silence,” “Turning of a Key,” and “Through The Doorway.” The release was considered by many critics as one of the best produced new age albums of its time.
In 1996, Gettel took a break from his Narada contract and was allowed to release an independent album where he chose to revisit his first inspiration of Washington's San Juan Islands.
The year 1997 found Gettel once again on the Narada roster with the release “Winter,” a compilation of some of his previous seasonal singles along with several new solo piano compositions.
From all of the international travels Gettel took with Bush School students through England and Scotland in the '90s, many of the inspirational moments that found fertile ground in this release.
Among the list of musician guests were, of course, Sandin Wilson on fretless bass, Jerry O’Sullivan on Uilleann pipes and Irish whistles, Brian Thiessan on guitar, Davin McLaird on drums, and Frank Bry again at the mixing helm.
The album closes with the surprise tune, "She Moved Through the Fair," a traditional Celtic folk song featuring Rita Springer on vocal.
The live band created an incredible sense of spontaneity, and many critics considered this release the finest of Gettel's Narada recordings.
The artists collaborated to create in 2001 a “he said-she said” release cleverly titled “One Piano” on Suzanne Ciani's Seventh Wave Records.
The location, landscape and community was perfect for the reinvention of his creativity, and after a 20-year hiatus from composing, the next musical concept hit unexpectedly.
In early January, 2021, Gettel felt a strong pull to once again jump into composing with the intention of releasing the new material to the public.
“The View From Here” is a return to Gettel's solo piano days, and in some ways reminiscent of his debut album, “San Juan Suite.” His love of merging natural ambient sounds with his compositions reappears here to great effect.