Piano pop rock songstress + film, commercial and CollegeHumor.com composer = Cheryl B. Engelhardt.
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Bio
Hey there person on the other side of the screen. Thanks for checking out my site and music. I'm tickled pink to be able to share it with you. If you want to skip over my bio, you can scroll down and find my personal blog (or just click here), which I try to update regularly. If you want the whole kit'n'kaboodle, well then, read on....
I remember playing the piano while cartoons were on mute when I was a kid, trying to make music to match the purple elephant's heavy steps, or the little fairies flying around, or the bouncing gummy bears. Those days at the piano haven't changed much except that I'm now writing music to sing to. After some recent time of feeling sort of lost in the world, I started writing songs that would cheer me up. I wrote the record I needed to hear. That's what "One Up" is to me.
So the story goes: I started playing the piano at age 3, was a total ham in grade school (I would practically force my little sister to perform musicals I wrote in our backyard), and then I went to Cornell to study biology and ecology, with a double major in music. My first job out of school was doing SCUBA diving research for the United States Geological Survey. While saying "I dive for the government" sounds fairly badass, looking for mussels in the Delaware River was far from glamorous. I also really missed my piano. So when the river got too cold and we went on a break, I found myself in Rome, Italy, writing music for a web site. And thus began my music career. From freelance indie film composing to picking up side jobs (like personal training and bouncing at a bar, for reals), I was lucky enough to land a job at one of New York's finest editing houses, Crew Cuts.... as a messenger. Loved it, learned a lot. Fast forward one more year to getting hired as an assistant tech at the top notch jingle house, BigFoote Music. This led to opportunities to compose for commercials. All this time in New York, I thought, "hey, if I had a record, I could pitch my songs to these ads." So I joined a few bands to "see how it was done", learn the ropes and, pretty soon, met enough musicians to form my own band. Before long, "Shoes Off And Run" was born. The second child, "Craving The Second" popped out and now we are celebrating the arrival of "One Up". (These are albums, people, not actual names of children.)
Where am I now? Well, sitting at my computer, possibly in the country, possibly in my Harlem studio, in between working on a few freelance composing jobs and getting charts ready for my next full band rehearsal. Or maybe I'm booking the next tour to Switzerland, or scheduling the next orchestra recording session. Either way, I'm really loving life and I'm so grateful that you want to listen to the products that come out of it.
For fun, here are some facts you will never need to know about me:
1. I'm left-handed.
2. I have a hard time keeping most houseplants alive.
3. I have a strange love for fish (live ones only).
4. I have a strange love for Skittles.
5. I adore "The Princess Bride" - the book, right next to book 3 of Harry Potter.
6. I've been told that for being 5'9 and 3/4", my size 8 tootsies are too small and I should be teeter-tottering all over the place.
7. I try to recycle everything and get really pissed off by litter.
8. I'd rather watch TV than a movie.