Cherise’s expansive musical journey began in Gary, Indiana, where gospel harmonies, classical voice training, and the improvisational language of Black music shaped her earliest years. Inspired by her mother’s love of music and the artistry of Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Kirk Franklin, and Mariah Carey, she developed a sound that is lush in feeling, intentional in craft, and unafraid to cross genres.
Equal parts scholar, performer, and cultural storyteller, Cherise Michelle lives at the intersection of scholarship, performance, and the professional music world. She recently completed a year of doctoral work in Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she explored how Black musical traditions travel through time and space, shape identity, preserve memory, and help these communities imagine new futures for themselves. Her research includes examining Black micro-festival culture in Los Angeles as a site of economic stability and relational repair, Harlem Renaissance literature, and the Black Creative Process. In 2025, she completed an intensive summer of Portuguese language study, expanding her ability to engage directly with Afro-Brazilian archives and scholarship.
Cherise has performed for both intimate gatherings and large-scale audiences and has shared stages with artists such as Lucky Daye (2021), Coi Leray (2020), Mereba (2020), and Dreezy (2020) as part of Pomona College’s annual spring festival, ONOxNochella. She has also appeared at Breaking Sound: LA, Melrose Trading Post, Juneteenth in the Park, and the Kaiser Permanente Black History Month Celebration. Her music dwells in the fine grain of lived experience such as quiet kitchen dances, candlelit dinners, and walks to the corner store, woven into layered harmonies and jazz-touched chords.
Her upcoming single, Flatline, arrives in September 2025. It is a meditation on intimacy, presence, and the tender space between love and loss. Previous releases include her original tracks: “Honey” (2020), “Good Days” (2020), “This Time” (2019), “Icarus” (2018), and “MoonGirl” (2018). Released covers and remixes include her takes on “Plastic Off the Sofa” by Beyoncé (2022), “Fade Away” by Lucky Daye (2021), and “Red Mercedes (Remix) by Amine (2020)—all available via SoundCloud.
Beyond her creative work, Cherise works full-time collaborating with major film studios, record labels, and music libraries. Her work as a Music Coordinator includes sourcing emerging talent and assisting with music curation for marketing on high-profile projects.
Her accolades are multiple: the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellowship for Graduate Study, the Gordan A. Hogan Memorial Prize in Music, and the Marian and Charles Holmes Performing Arts Grant, to name a few. She is a GRAMMY U Los Angeles Chapter member and an alum of Gyrl Wonder Leadership Academy, Girls Who Listen University, and Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America held annually at Princeton.
Cherise’s work and journey have been featured in VoyageLA, Shoutout LA, Bold Journey, Canvas Rebel, and the Black Joy Archive, where she has been celebrated for uniting her academic rigor, industry fluency, and deeply personal creative expression. Her path reflects a rare combination of cultural scholarship, artistic craft, and professional versatility, and this makes her work resonate across communities, disciplines, and audiences.