Cheryl B. Engelhardt

Biography

Cheryl B. Engelhardt is a GRAMMY®-nominated composer and songwriter.

Cheryl started her career as an advertising and film composer in New York City, creating scores for several nationally airing commercials and short films before hitting the road with her pop band. Her music has been heard on dozens of TV shows including “So You Think You Can Dance” and “All My Children”, on airlines, and on meditation apps like Insight Timer.

Engelhardt also composes for social justice choirs and was recently featured in People, Harper’s Bazaar, and Forbes Magazines for her collaboration with Martin Luther King’s goddaughter, Donzaleigh Abernathy, in her song “The Listening”.

Her unique journey as an indie artist has landed her on stage singing with Sting, writing a musical (“Boiler Room Girls”), scoring documentaries and live theater, and on a train: being the first person to compose and produce an entire album on a cross-USA Amtrak trip. This album, “The Passenger”, became her seventh commercially record (her third in the New Age genre) and was nominated for a GRAMMY®. Her GRAMMY® red carpet look of a crop top made of her fans’ signatures and ball gown skirt landed her in Vogue.

Cheryl is a certified trauma-informed master coach and provides a variety of resources helping musicians build systems to automate, rejuvenate, and elevate their careers and lives. She is the facilitator and coach for the popular musician mastermind, Amplify.

A sought-after speaker, moderating panels at SXSW, ASCAP Expo, TAXI Road Rally, and many universities including her alma mater of Cornell University, Cheryl is also a voting member of The Recording Academy and part of their District Advocacy team. After graduating from Cornell with a double major in both music and biology, Cheryl’s first job was SCUBA diving for the United States Geological Survey. Six months into the job, she found herself in Rome, Italy, creating music for a friend’s video project and she never turned back. What followed was an apprenticeship at a NYC hip-hop recording studio, being hired as the tech and then music supervisor for a major jingle house, and moving on to scoring dozens of videos for the popular website College Humor.

Engelhardt also studied orchestration at Juilliard, and serves as the American Choral Directors Association’s Chair of Research and Repertoire for Contemporary and Commercial Music for the East Division.