Ingrid Michaelson at the State Theatre | Arts & Culture

INGRID MICHAELSON with special guest Greg Laswell

STATE THEATRE

609 Congress St.

Portland, ME

http://www.statetheatreportland.com/

Saturday, July 28 at 8pm

Tickets go on-sale Friday, April 27 at 10:00am and will be available in person at the Cumberland County Civic Center Box Office, charge by phone at 800-745-3000 and online http://www.statetheatreportland.com/

$20 advance, $25 day of show / General Admission, all ages.  

 Ingrid Michaelson will be the first to admit she's outgrown the cutesy singer/songwriter persona she's cultivated during the past several years. Once the poster girl for charming indie commercial ditties -- her kitschy tune "The Way I Am" was inescapable in the fall of 2007 after placement in an Old Navy TV ad and eventually went platinum -- she's realized it's time to take her next step as an artist.

 "I kind of always feel like the little sister at the older sister's slumber party," says the Staten Island-bred singer, whose songs have also been used to sell such products as Mott's Apple Juice and have been prominently featured in a number of TV shows, including "Grey's Anatomy," "Parenthood" and "One Tree Hill."

 Though Michaelson acknowledges that the commercial appeal of her earlier work helped launch her career, her latest effort, "Human Again," released on Jan. 24, finds her ditching the kitsch in an effort to showcase a bolder, more mature side.

"She wanted to move beyond perceptions of her fitting perfectly into the singer/songwriter or the ukulele-based, perfect-music-to-sell-a-product genres," says Michaelson's manager Lynn Grossman, who first discovered the singer on Myspace in 2006. "On 'Human Again,' the egg is cracked and she's poking her head out into a new world."

 Michaelson credits producer David Kahne ( Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks) with helping her find her voice on the new album and encouraging her to display her strengths as a singer. She notes her past albums -- 2007's Girls and Boys, which featured "The Way I Am" and has sold 332,000 copies, 2008's EP Be OK (195,000 copies) and 2009's Everybody, which was released on Cabin 24 in partnership with Universal Motown and bowed at No. 18 on the Billboard 200 (145,000) -- were "vocally very cautious."

 Michaelson is also venturing into TV and film: She and a former high school friend are shopping around a sitcom pilot based on Michaelson's experiences as a budding singer/songwriter, and she's collaborating with movie directors to write music, including for the film "Misfits," starring Guy Pearce.

http://www.ingridmichaelson.com/