Michael Stribling (born 1951) is an American musician, best known for his series of
New age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...
albums. His debut New age album, ''Songs of Hope and Healing'', was named Best Electronic Album of 2006 by ''New Age Reporter''.
Biography
Stribling was born in 1951 in
Merced, California, United States, the older of two children to Ivan Stribling and Lorraine Murphy Wenrich, later divorced. Stribling attended
Merced High School, graduating in 1969. He next attended
California State University Fresno
California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) is a public university in Fresno, California. It is one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. The university had a fall 2020 enrollment of 25,341 students. It offers bachelo ...
, graduating in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in percussion performance. He later earned a master's degree in theology with an emphasis in marriage and family ministries from
Fuller Theological Seminary in
Pasadena, California
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
I ...
.
Stribling began music lessons at age seven, studying violin, clarinet, and guitar, but when
the Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
arrived in 1964 he “switched to drums and never looked back,” according to his website. He worked as a performer, composer, engineer, and in the 1970s worked as a radio announcer for a classic rock station.
From June 1974 to July 1975, he toured the U.S., Europe, and Canada with
Johnny Mathis
John Royce Mathis (born September 30, 1935) is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standard music, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum s ...
. He also performed with jazz performers of the time, including
Clark Terry
Clark Virgil Terry Jr. (December 14, 1920 – February 21, 2015) was an American swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, and a composer and educator.
He played with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948–51), Duke ...
,
Oliver Nelson,
Cannonball Adderley
Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley (September 15, 1928August 8, 1975) was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s.
Adderley is perhaps best remembered for the 1966 soul jazz single "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", whi ...
and more.
Stribling lists his musical influences as including
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
,
Jan Hammer
Jan Hammer () (born 17 April 1948) is a Czech-American musician, composer, and record producer. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra during the early 1970s, as well as his film scores fo ...
,
Vangelis
Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou ( el, Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου ; 29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis ( ; el, Βαγγέλης, links=no ), was a Greek composer and arranger of ...
,
Paul Winter
Paul Winter (born August 31, 1939) is an American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He is a pioneer of world music and earth music, which interweaves the voices of the wild with instrumental voices from classical, jazz and world music. The ...
,
J.S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suite ...
,
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
,
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most ...
Joni Mitchell
Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell ( Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American musician, producer, and painter. Among the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitchell became known for her sta ...
,
Steely Dan
Steely Dan is an American rock band founded in 1971 in New York by Walter Becker (guitars, bass, backing vocals) and Donald Fagen (keyboards, lead vocals). Initially the band had a stable lineup, but in 1974, Becker and Fagen retired from live ...
,
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and activist. He rose to fame as the original lead singer of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, he launched ...
, and more.
Apart from his music career, Stribling has worked in many areas of the mental health field, working for outpatient mental health clinics, substance addiction treatment, foster care, and group homes. He became a licensed marriage and family therapist in April 1992.
Works
* ''Journey Within'', Leela Music, produced in 1989 and re-released by Leela Music in 2005.
* ''Songs of Hope and Healing'', Leela Music, 2006.
* Reached No. 1 on the New Age Reporter Top 100 List
* Received New Age Reporter's Lifestyle Music Award for Best Electronic Album of 2006
* ''Out of the Darkness, Into the Light'', Leela Music, 2007.
* Reached No. 2 on the New Age Reporter Top 100 List in its first month of release (January).
* Nominated for two 2007 Lifestyle Music Awards.
* ''Another Day in Paradise'', Leela Music, 2007.
* Ranked in the Top 5 on the New Age Reporter Top 100 List for three months in a row (November & December, 2007; January, 2008).
* Nominated for a 2008 Lifestyle Music Award.
* ''Love, Light, and Water'', Leela Music, 2008.
* Ranked in the Top 5 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 List.
* Nominated for a 2008 Lifestyle Music Award.
* ''The Promise'', Leela Music, 2009.
* Received Zone Music Reporter's Award for Best Electronic Album of 2009
* ''Paradise Lost'', Leela Music, 2010
* Ranked No. 2 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 List.
* ''Safely in the Arms of Love'', Leela Music, 2011
* Ranked No. 3 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 List.
* ''A Better Place'', Leela Music, 2015
* Ranked No. 3 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 List.
* ''Union – Music for Lovers'', Leela Music, 2017
* Ranked No. 1 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 List.
* ''One World'', Leela Music, 2019
References
original website
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stribling, Michael
1951 births
Living people
American male drummers
American new-age musicians