Halby

Halby civil Michael Halberstadt is a songwriter, singer, guitarist and pianist. Born and raised in Kaiserslautern, southwest Germany, he first came to public attention as a founding member of the gothic band "Arts and Decay" (1986-1992). The band made international headlines and is considered a pioneer of German gothic rock. With the release of four studio albums and with their song "Mecal", the five musicians had a significant influence on the German Dark Wave scene of the nineties.

Halby studied jazz and popular music in Frankfurt from 1983 to 1986 and from 1995 lived first in Mainz and later in Hamburg where he worked as a studio musician and performed as a guitarist with Gloria Gaynor, Nena, Frank Zander and Mathou, among others.

After the turn of the millennium, Halby returned to his hometown Kaiserslautern, founded the record label " Daddykate Records" under which he released his own songs ,as well as music for cinema and television productions, alongside mainly regional artists. In 2016, he co-founded the formation "Shaian", an intercultural band with twelve musicians from different cultures, which was awarded the special prize of the Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate Malu Dreyer, and because of the honorary commitment to integration, received an invitation to the Bellevue Palace from Joachim Gauck.

In addition to his work as a musician and music producer, Halby has been running the music and culture club Salon Schmitt in Kaiserslautern since 2015. The former hairdresser's salon, where international artists of different genres in particular regularly perform, also serves as a studio for audio and video productions for regional artists and his own projects.

Halby was regularly on the road as a soloist and with various band formations on German stages until the end of 2019, but like many of his musician colleagues, had to completely stop live operations from 2020 due to the corona pandemic. He withdrew for several months into the studio and used the time to write new songs With a new program he is now in the starting blocks to present this as soon as possible to a physical audience.