LISA B MELDS SPOKEN POETRY AND SUNG LYRICS, in original songs and adventurously reimagined standards. Her music spans jazz, hip-hop, and electronica grooves.

WITH PREVIOUS PERFORMANCES AT 90+ VENUES in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, Lisa is returning to safe live gigs with a Sept. 2021 Berkeley, Calif. show and upcoming dates in 2022 and beyond. 

HER SEVEN FULL-LENGTH CDS released over the past two decades received radio play and charting on hundreds of trade-reporter jazz, college, and free-form stations.

THEY ALSO GARNERED CRITICAL ACCLAIM in Jazz Times, Jazziz, All About Jazz, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and many other publications. (See Radio and Press for more.) 

All of Lisa B's CDs were recorded at Pajama Studios in Oakland, Calif. in close collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer-engineer-composer James Gardiner (Jim), who has 42 gold- and platinum-certified records as an engineer.

HER LITERARY POETRY — featured on the new record "Reverberant" — has been published in her book "The Transparent Body" from the prestigious Wesleyan University Press poetry series and 60+ literary magazines and anthologies.

SHE HAS WON FELLOWSHIPS OR GRANTS from the City of Oakland, United States Artists, Hardly Strictly Music Relief Fund, California Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the East Bay/Oakland Relief Fund for Individuals in the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women, and the Puffin Foundation. With a master's degree in English literature/creative writing and years of experience as a coach and teacher, she offers a range of workshops/clinics to performers and creators.

Lisa's mother wrote poetry, and her father was a serious aficionado of avant-garde jazz as well as a friend to many musicians, whom Lisa met at a young age, including Jackie McLean, Elvin Jones, Cecil Taylor, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
 
AS A CHILD, LISA B STUDIED CLASSICAL PIANO BUT HER LISTENING RANGED FROM JAZZ — in particular, her parents’ favorites Carmen McRae and John Coltrane — to R&B and musical theater. But as an adult, her first forays into live performance were public readings of her own poetry.
 
AS HER POEMS BEGAN APPEARING IN LITERARY JOURNALS AND HER BOOK WAS PUBLISHED, Lisa B found that standing up alone before an audience with just her own words was powerful training in performance. Dedicating herself to the art of jazz singing — while still incorporating poetry into her show — was a natural progression.
 
KEY MUSICAL INFUENCES SPAN not only Coltrane and McRae, but also the bedrock of the Great American Songbook; vocal jazz pioneers Sheila Jordan, Jeanne Lee, and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross; melders of jazz, poetry, and soul Gil Scott-Heron and Jill Scott; and two who testify in music and verse, Aretha Franklin and Allen Ginsberg.
 
THE SPOKEN VERSE SHE INTEGRATES INTO HER SONGS reflects the influence of 1950s public poetry readings to jazz accompaniment, the biting rhythms of contemporary creative rap, and the poetic lyrics  of modern singer-songwriters. The result is genre-bending and multidimensional.

A RESIDENT OF OAKLAND, CALIF., Lisa B was nominated for a 2014 Oakland Indie Award. Her celebration of Oakland includes her music video “Holiday in Oakland,” which went viral locally. She has mentored youth through the public schools, city parks and recreation programs, and the Boys & Girls Club. 
 
SHE WORKS NOT ONLY AS A SINGER-POET and educator but also as a professional psychic.