The Bird & The Bee

Bio:If you know anything about the backgrounds of Inara George and Greg Kurstin, the accomplishments of the bird and the bee might not seem quite so casual as all that. Both are blessed with extraordinary intuitive musical abilities, which have been bolstered by years of practice.

Multi-instrumentalist Greg was a jazz piano prodigy by the time he started shaving; he moved to New York specifically to study with leftist Jaki Byard, a jazz icon best known as Mingus' pianist. He returned to Los Angeles and became one of the city’s most well respected musicians, lending his skills to the likes of Beck and Robert Moog, as well as writing with and/or producing The Flaming Lips, Peaches, and Lily Allen, to name a few.

As for Inara, she grew up in Los Angeles in a musical household, the daughter of Lowell George, frontman of the eclectic ‘70s Southern rock band Little Feat. For several years she was in different bands in the Los Angeles area until she began her solo career releasing 2005's critically acclaimed All Rise. During the making of that record was when Greg and Inara first met.

It was through mutual friend and All Rise producer, Mike Andrews, that Inara and Greg made a connection. "I like to sing standards, and Greg likes to play them," recalls Inara. "He was working on my record, and one day, after a rehearsal, we hung out near a piano and, for three or four hours, played all the old songs we knew." Ever since, Inara George and Greg Kurstin, alias the bird and the bee, are now an "army of two".