Gavin Mikhail

Hailing from Nashville, Gavin Mikhail crafts sincere and emotionally resonant pop anchored by piano. Born during 1975 in West Lafayette, Indiana, he was raised amid a household steeped in music and first took up classical piano study near the age of seven. As a teenager he had already become a skilled performer who regularly appeared on the organ at his local church. Following high school he enrolled in finance at Purdue University, where he simultaneously performed with several regional bands. After earning his degree he moved to Nashville and joined Giant Records, initially handling financing before shifting into the A&R division, where he assisted in promoting artists that included Blake Shelton, Clay Walker, Georgia Middleman, and additional acts. By the close of the 1990s he had departed Giant to focus on writing and recording his own material. His first release arrived in 2003 as the independently produced album My Personal Beauty Needs, with Like Normal People Do appearing three years afterward. Those projects began attracting listeners through online platforms, leading in 2007 to a distribution agreement with HMV and Tower Records in Japan. That same year he claimed victory in the U.K.’s Lay It Down and Mix It Up song contest, securing studio time at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in England. After traveling there he issued The Real World Sessions, Vol. 1 in 2009; the collection featured his rendition of Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You into the Dark,” a version that quickly circulated online and surpassed one million views. Capitalizing on the track’s reach, he next composed and performed a piano score for Ruta Sepetys’ New York Times best-selling novel Between Shades of Gray. He resumed issuing original material in 2012 with Some Die Young, followed in 2016 by the singles “Still Falling for You,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” and “Pompeii.”