Biography

Dusty Micale is an award-winning composer, songwriter, producer, keyboardist, and arranger.He studied composition under Stanley Wolfe at the Juilliard School and received his Bachelor of Music from Mannes/The New School in New York City. He was awarded a scholarship for further composition studies at the prestigious Aspen Music Festival and School, and was selected as a participant composer in an NYU/ASCAP Film-Scoring Intensive. Dusty’s songwriting catalogue is comprehensive and internationally acclaimed. He has been a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) since 1989.

His songs have appeared in numerous feature film soundtracks, including Mystic Pizza (Julia Roberts), Avenging Angelo (Sylvester Stallone), Off and Running (Cyndi Lauper), Rude Awakening (Cheech Marin), and Running Wild (Brooke Shields). He has collaborated extensively with Academy Award-winner Franke Previte (of “I Had the Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing). They co-wrote the title track for Cyndi Lauper’s album A Night to Remember, and released “Merry Christmas Everybody,” performed by Canadian artists Mark Masri and VIVACE. Dusty’s song “Ordinary Sunday” (translated as “Z Dwojga Cial”, recorded by Andrzej Piaseczny) held the #1 spot in Poland for several weeks, gaining Gold Record status.

Dusty is also an accomplished composer. He has scored over twenty Star Trek Books-On-Tape recordings, featuring narrations by stars of the TV series such as Leonard Nimoy and George Takei. His compositions can be found in several TV commercials, industrials, and animations. He has composed full-length documentary scores with worldwide releases, including Contemporary Days and Prayers of the Ancient Ones. His short film scores include Ciao Bella (Cannes Film Festival) and Going Down (Woodstock, Tribeca, and Berlin Film Festivals).

In partnership with Hamilton Arts & Letters (HA&L), Dusty scored multiple short films, including The Foundry (2021, AGH Film Festival), The Perfect Archive (2021, AGH Film Festival), KASSAK (2022), and Necromantic (2023). He has spoken about his composition work with HA&L at several McMaster University-led Centre for Community-Engaged Narrative Arts (CCENA) discussions. He is also involved in an ongoing series of community-focused inter-arts collaborations with local (self-identified) disabled poets—such as Roxanna Bennet, Elizabeth Tessier, and Paul Lisson—creating musical pieces inspired by their poetry. This work is supported by the Ontario D/deaf/HoH, Disabled, Mad, Sick and Neurotypical Poetics Collective, The Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.

Known for his skillful horn and string arrangements, Dusty has worked on several large-scale performances, including “Beatles Bash” (a note-for-note symphonic re-creation of Beatles music) and “British Invasion.” He has contributed to “Glen Burtnik: On Canvas” (a PBS TV Production) and Glen Burtnik & Friends’ annual “Xmas Xtravaganza,” a charity event featuring local and international guest artists. Dusty was the orchestrator and keyboardist on Dominic Chianese’s album Core N’ Grato (Chianese is known for his role as Uncle Junior in The Sopranos).

Dusty has been a Professor of Music at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario since 2013 and is the founder of the Mohawk “ArtPop” Ensemble. This exciting, eclectic performance group features arrangements of his original compositions and insightful renditions of curated popular covers. One of his original compositions, “NightTripper” (inspired by Alex Colville’s iconic Canadian painting Horse and Train), was performed by ArtPop at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 2019 where the original artwork is installed.

He has also been featured as the lead keyboardist/pianist with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra (HPO) for its concert series “HPO Performs The Beatles.” Other live performance highlights include work with Gary U.S. Bonds (National Tour), La Bamba and the Hubcaps (Bruce Springsteen/Conan O’Brien’s horn section), Peter Noone (Herman’s Hermits), Jerry Topinka, Billy J. Kramer, Ray Andersen (Meatloaf), Glen Burtnik (Styx, ELO), Patty Smyth, Fiona, Debbie Harry (Blondie), Denny Laine (Wings), Liberty DeVito (Billy Joel), Marshall Crenshaw, Dave Mason, Ian Thomas, Darcy Hepner, and many others.