|
Visit Mike's MySpace Page
| |
Mike Jurgensen has lived in
the Tampa Bay area since 1968, when he moved from his native Chapel Hill, NC.
Mike began playing the guitar when he was 7 years old, but it was not until 1992
that he began performing in public seriously. It was then that he discovered
the Iron Horse coffee house in Tarpon Springs, where he began playing open mics.
Over the next few years he branched out to do open mics and feature sets at
other Tampa Bay area coffee houses and restaurants, as well as regularly
emceeing the Iron Horse open mics. He has played at acoustic venues and folk
festivals around the state of Florida, and has opened for such notable
performers as Cheryl Wheeler, Richard Shindell, and Rod MacDonald. Mike has also
been the featured artist on various live music radio shows on WMNF 88.5FM in
Tampa.
Although Mike had written several songs prior to 1992, that
was the year in which he began writing seriously. Mike was a finalist in the
1994, 1996, and 2002 South Florida Folk Festival national song-writing
competitions, and he won the 1998, 2004, and 2006 Will McLean Festival "Best
Florida Song" competitions. He also placed several other songs in the top 10
of the Will McLean song competitions between 1998 and 2002 , and he placed
3rd in the 2003 competition. In addition, two of Mike's songs are featured
in the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning radio documentary "Apalachicola Doin'
Time", produced by WUFT in Gainesville, and his song "The Golden Fleece of
Tarpon Springs" will be featured on an upcoming Florida Humanities Council
project entitled "Settlers by the Sea". Mike's debut solo CD "The Road Away
From Home" was released in early 2002. Mike also has a sampler CD,
containing 7 of his Florida-themed songs.
From 1994 until 2002, Mike performed as a member of the
well-known Florida acoustic group, Myriad. Together with Myriad, Mike played
concerts at coffee houses, radio shows, benefit concerts, and festivals around
the state. Myriad performed at the Florida Folk Festival, the Will McLean and
Gamble Rogers Festivals, the South Florida Folk Festival, and the Suwannee
Spring Fest, to name a few. Myriad produced 4 recordings- a studio tape produced
before he joined the group, a live tape recorded at the Iron Horse in
1995, and two subsequent studio recordings, "Song Circle" and "New Strings",
both of which were released in 1997. Several of Mike's songs are featured on the
Myriad recordings.
Since
Myriad disbanded in 2002, Mike has been performing solo and with friends at
numerous festivals and acoustic venues around the state. Most recently, he has
been performing with Pete Hennings and Pete Price in the trio
"2PM", and with his son, Ian, as a duo.
Besides
his music interests, Mike is also quite active in community theater. He has
appeared in lead roles in Richey Suncoast Theatre productions of "Mister
Roberts" and "Little Foxes" (for which he received a Lary Award nomination), and
in the Francis Wilson Theatre productions of "Anna's Brooklyn Promise" and "My
Three Angels". He has also had supporting roles in the Eight O'Clock Theater
production of "Streetcar Named Desire" (for which he also received a Lary Award
nomination in the role of Mitch), Richey productions of "Becket" and "Billy
Budd", and in Tampa Players productions of "The Grapes of Wrath" and
"Assassins". In 2004, Mike was honored to play the part of George Tesman in the
Avenue Players production of Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" at the Leepa-Rattner
Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs. The script for this production was a
translation done 50 years ago by Mike's late father, Kai Jurgensen.
Most recently,
Mike was cast in the role of Christopher Christopherson in Eugene O'Neill's
"Anna Christie", also at the Leepa-Rattner Museum, for which he received his 3rd
Lary Award nomination.
|
