Melissa Reese is a musical prodigy. She began singing and playing piano classically at the age of four. By 14, she was writing her own songs, then at 18 taught herself Pro Tools, Reason and Logic to produce, arrange, engineer, and mix her own recordings.

Melissa is the youngest of three girls born into a racially-mixed household in Seattle. Her mother is of Chinese, Spanish and Filipino descent, and her father – who is Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Danish, and part Japanese– own a real estate company that occupied much of their time, leaving child caring to her maternal grandparents. It was a splendid childhood, one surrounded with warmth and lots of nurturing hands to guide, including her older sisters, who were eight and twelve years older.

“By the time I could talk and gather what was going on in the world, my middle sister was doing girls’ choir and lots of other performing,” says Melissa. “Initially, I took up singing to mimic her, but quickly began loving it as my own thing. I ended up going on a similar path as she; joined girls’ choir and began piano lessons, but as I got older, I went down a different path. She continued on a classical route and now sings opera, whereas I took up songwriting and doing more R & B, pop and hip hop stuff.”

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