Juno Award-nominated artist Robert Michaels is a platinum-selling guitarist who made a name for himself with two impressive independent releases even before the Warner Music Canada label put their backing behind a third album in 1998. His instrumental music crosses over into samples and tastes from many genres, including flamenco guitar numbers. Michaels started his musical career in Canada, though his parents aren't Canadian natives, but immigrated there from Italy. As a child, and than as a teen, Michaels was raised on a varied musical diet that found him being influenced by many different kinds of musicians and styles along the way, like Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana, and Wes Montgomery, and everything from rock, to tango, to jazz. In 1996, without befit of a label, Michaels completed and released a debut album titled Paradiso. Surprisingly, his first full-length outing sold better than he could have hoped. It was soon followed by a second recording, Arizona. The sophomore not only sold better than the first album, but even earned him a nomination for a coveted Juno Award for Best Instrumental Artist of the Year. Reviews and press from his popular albums and from his Juno nomination, drew enough interest toward Michaels that when he went to work on a third album, Utopia, he did so working under the major Warner Music Canada label.