During summer months, you can find Mike's Coffee House Music in the beach cities of Southern California where he plays on a Yamaha P140 or Roland FP5 digital piano. The schedule appears here each June.

Coffee House Music is about improvising, creating "new music" on the spot, based on feelings of the moment, influenced by the surrounding environment. Mike began piano by learning Blues and Jazz, mostly by ear but also guided by several teachers who published books & CDs and who also teach via the Internet. Among these are David Bennett Cohen (Blues), Debbie Denke (Jazz), Warren Bernhardt (Jazz), Dave Frank (Blues & Jazz), Tim Richards (Blues & Jazz), and Edward Weiss (New Age). Patrick Hardman, a student of Robert Laughlin, was Mike's first piano teacher who showed him how to play chord-style piano. He now takes occasional lessons from noted jazz pianistists in the LA area.

The spirit of Coffee House Music is not note-for-note reading or playing fixed songs. The music seeks its own voice each moment and is conceived as "playful music" - not an attempt to replicate previous forms like jazz, new age, or blues, although certain general patterns (AABA, scales and chords) are general guidelines. The music draws on scales, chords, rhythms, and techniques from various styles.

You can download a low-bitrate MP3 of Mike's Coffee House Music from this page.