"Mike Schmid" is an American singer/songwriter, as well as the keyboard player and backing vocalist for Miley Cyrus and many other pop acts. He began his career in the band Aggressive Little Juice Machine. He then went on to release his debut self-titled album in 2001. In 2006 he released "The High Cost of Living" and the Christmas Extended play/EP "Snow Day". In 2008 the album "The House We Built" was released and "Let It Out" released in 2011.

He won the grand prize in the USA Songwriting Competition in 2012 for his song "Can You See All the Colors."

His songs have been featured in several TV shows including So You Think You Can Dance (U.S. TV series)/So You Think You Can Dance, The Real World, Felicity (TV series)/Felicity, The Bad Girls Club, and Flashpoint (TV series)/Flashpoint.

More Mike Schmid on Wikipedia.

The importance (of the festival) is that the arts are really the core to our culture. Everything revolves around the arts and some of the research now in education is showing very clearly that the arts are really core to that. That you can do so much more with the arts: developing the brain, developing connections in the brain, developing how people learn, how children learn.

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We took up the entire space (of the old Grand Wayne Center). All the side rooms, every inch of it. So now we're all in one area. So much nicer and it's great.

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