By Ann Driscoll
Associate Editor

The breadth of Michael Gottlieb’s musical interests and influences is vast. A singer-songwriter who crafts dark, orchestral piano pop, Gottlieb, ’09, is also an accomplished vocalist, composer, and arranger.

Years of study and dedication to his craft have engendered the 27-year old musician heard today. Prior to coming to Berklee in the fall of 2007, Gottlieb studied music at Tel Aviv’s Hed College of Music, where the star student was asked to join the faculty. Soon thereafter, he received a scholarship to study at Berklee.

Drawing upon his experience scoring films that were distributed throughout Europe, Gottlieb initially majored in film scoring, but instead made the switch to professional music. The college recognized his talent: they selected his original, “You’re in the Sun,” as a winner of the 2008 Songwriting Competition, and the vocal department picked him to sing background vocals for Singer’s Night in fall 2007.

Gottlieb’s vocals can be heard on the recording projects of his sister, the New York-based jazz singer, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb. Her album, Mayim Rabim/Great Waters featuring Gottlieb’s lead vocals, was released on Tzadik, a label started and operated by experimental saxophonist and frequent Lou Reed collaborator, John Zorn.

With his wide array of talents, Gottlieb could seemingly pursue a career in a variety of directions—as a vocalist, a film composer, an arranger—but his primary pursuit is writing, performing, and recording original pop songs.

“I learned [at Berklee] that a musician really needs to focus on what he or she wants to do. Berklee offers a lot of information, but it took me a while to really figure out what’s the most important thing for me, and right now it’s songwriting.”

Having just completed his debut album at Somerville’s Q Division studios, Gottlieb will graduate in December and move back to Israel. “I will put a lot of energy in marketing [the record] once I go back.”

A diehard fan and student of mainstream and avant garde pop alike, Gottlieb’s compositions, which have Hebrew lyrics, are influenced by everyone from Michael Jackson (“I still know every bass line or “c’mon” in every Micheal Jackson song, since I was 12”) to Laurie Anderson. The bouncy, whimsical number, “Karati la maya” (I Named Her Maya) has the melodic hooks of Madonna’s best work with the irony, wit, and energy of early Elvis Costello and the Attractions. The autobiographical song is about how the openly gay Gottlieb had to conceal his sexuality while doing compulsory military service in the Israel Defense Forces by pretending to have a girlfriend named Maya—a turbulent emotional experience transmuted into deceptively catchy, wryly funny pop.

Gottlieb’s strengths at arranging bring a vital dimension to the material, which frequently features violin, cello, viola, and tenor sax. “I try to think of the song or piece and it’s character and I decide what instruments I want to use. Once I’ve decided that, the lines will come eventually when I sit at the piano and play the song a bunch of times.” In their rich, fully realized trappings, his songs, both live and recorded, resemble the work of other orchestral, theatrical pop titans, Rufus Wainwright and Antony and the Johnsons, with subtle whiffs of Middle Eastern harmony and melodic motifs.

In Boston, Gottlieb found that his unique marriage of language and genre has made it difficult to book gigs. According to Gottlieb, there is an audience in the United States for performers of Jewish folk music, but not pop/rock in Hebrew. In other words, you can get gigs playing folk songs in Hebrew for old Jewish people in Brookline, but it’s harder to book Hebrew pop/rock at clubs like TT the Bear’s.

Gottlieb says it’s the opposite in Israel, where having English lyrics is a disadvantage. “[Having Hebrew lyrics] definitely helps…Even though there’s a lot of English-based music in Israel, most of it is still very unknown to the general public. Even though some of it is really good, the major labels tend to ignore it.”

By happenstance, Gottlieb recorded his debut album with an Israeli-American engineer, Rafi Sofer at Q Division, who speaks Hebrew and was able to understand the lyrics, and therefore, the music. His experience with Sofer and at the studio in general was positive. “It’s a great studio. It was also pretty cool to find out that in that very same studio the Pixies recorded Surfer Rosa and Aimee Mann recorded the songs for one of my favorite films, Magnolia.”

The album consists of songs Gottlieb wrote during the past two years at Berklee. “I feel like it’s the first time I’m 100 percent satisfied with something I’ve created. The band sounds great, and I really think I got the most out of these songs. I feel like the album is very organic, very focused.”

When Gottlieb charts his one-way plane ride for Israel, he will leave behind, and perhaps later reunite with a tight-knit community of Israeli Berklee students. “Most Israelis I know here are very connected. Personally, most of my best friends here are Israelis. Musically, most of them are Jazz Performance majors, though I knew a few who do more pop/rock stuff. Socially, we can be pretty loud but I think we’re nice and friendly people usually.”

Gottlieb will live in Jerusalem with his boyfriend until he finishes medical school, and then relocate to the more cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, because “that’s where it all happens!”