EPK: Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) ~ Singer, Spoken-Word Artist, Poet
Available for Two Shows with Band:
'60s Magic Now! and I Get A Kick: Cole Porter Reimagined - details below!
Daring, dexterous singer/songwriter/poet… appeal[s] to both traditional and contemporary jazz tastes and even hip-hop hipsters.
- Philadelphia Daily News
An incisive way of chronicling situations, memories, and emotions… a pliable, expressive voice dipped in blue.
- Jazz Times
>>>>>>> Scroll down for music videos and live show videos! >>>>>>
'60s Magic Now!: The Y-Verse - listen/watch here
Gathers the poet, singer, improviser, political observer, and intuitive reader into a single project… Old song[s] become a space for new voices to listen, respond, and imagine their way forward…
Connects 1960s pop and political ideals with later…developments in jazz, hip-hop, funk, and spoken word. San Francisco and the greater Bay Area played a defining role in the counterculture Lisa is revisiting, [and] the project comes from present-day Oakland and Sausalito studios…the album’s stylistic shifts feel connected. - Aaron Willschick, V13.Net
There is joy and rhythmic confidence throughout. Playful and purposeful at the same time. - Foxfire Magazine
Several of the most durable songs released in 1967 imagined freedom through characters who could not be easily explained… wanderers, mysterious women, fantasy figures, and collective dreams…
On ’60s Magic Now!: The Y-Verse, Lisa B returns to those songs with an interest in what their freedom included, what it overlooked, and what it might offer listeners nearly six decades later.
A thoughtful album about cultural memory and unfinished change…
From Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” to “Everybody Get Together”…confrontation and community coexist, as they often did in the music and activism of the period.
The record’s genre range is broad, yet its ideas provide continuity. Soul-jazz warmth, hip-hop language, Latin rhythms, folk directness, and spoken poetry all become ways of asking how inherited music can remain socially and emotionally useful. - Music-News.com
Lisa approaches [the songs]… as living material rather than historical artifacts…For Lisa B, that act of imagination is where political and personal change begin. - Flex Music Blog.com
Lisa’s vocal delivery brings a soulful, conversational quality…an extension of the performance instincts she first discovered at poetry readings, where timing…and presence taught her how to hold an audience. - Kath Galasso, Onstage Magazine.com
The songs…carry political urgency while retaining humor, sensuality, movement, and surprise… familiar enough to invite listeners inside, altered enough to make them reconsider what they thought the song was asking. -The Real Ding.com
Lisa construct[s] a neighboring musical universe where songs can speak differently without losing contact with their origins… an old lyric makes space for a new reply. - Finneas Enright, No Transmission.com
Movement, openness, and appetite for change run through the album as a whole. - The IndieGrid.Co.UK
Lisa B and Lyrics Born dream of a better world in their inspired revamp of the Traffic classic "Dear Mr. Fantasy." The collaboration feels genuinely conversational. - Darryl Sterdan
I Get A Kick: Cole Porter Reimagined - listen on YouTube
Bernstein reinterprets the Porter Songbook… to magnify the American Treasure that is these songs...
shows an acute attention to rhythm, tempo, and time... total command of the material. - C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz
With the freewheeling control of the raw materials that only the finest jazz practitioners possess,
B takes possession of Cole Porter's witty, poignant stories... a true American original. - Downbeat critic Ted Panken in his liner notes
B brings her poet’s incisive ear to uncover the roiling emotions beneath Porter’s glittering confections. - Andrew Gilbert, Berkeleyside
Modernize[s] the classic songs without… losing their essences… rewarding and intriguing. - Scott Yanow, L.A. Jazz Scene
Available for Poetry Readings & Workshops
Solo or with Band
LISA B (LISA BERNSTEIN)'S FREE-VERSE POETRY is featured in her second book God in Her Ruffled Dress (What Books Press), also available as an audiobook with new original music; her most recent full-length record "Reverberant" (Piece of Pie Records); her first book The Transparent Body (Wesleyan University Press); the chapbook Anorexia (Five Fingers Poetry); and 60+ literary magazines and anthologies, including Antaeus, Caliban, City Lights Review, Field, Kenyon Review, Lilith, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Tikkun, and Zyzzyva.
In addition to performances and readings, she offers workshops, clinics, and residencies aimed at writers and performers, drawing on her varied experience as a teacher and coach at the university, community, and K-12 levels and her private coaching practice. Early in her literary career she was Associate Director of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. Learn more about her teaching qualifications and offerings.
See the enthusiastic responses below from critics, fans, and a U.S. Poet Laureate.
“From its provocative title to the last sentence, this…heretical book surprises, devastates, and delights.“ —Calyx
“An invitation to experience God as ‘the one I know.’…The physical body is embraced as a place of knowing and mystery, illness, sex, and healing.“ —Harbor Review
“A playful, soulful, feminist imagining of how we experience the sacred.” —Broad Street Review, Best of 2023
“I am charmed and touched...simultaneously whimsical and serious.” —Jazz Lives
“Lisa B’s stunning new book weaves together body, spirituality, politics, and the world we live in…will stir your mind and bring you into beauty.” —Kelli Russell Agodon
“Bears écriture feminine into the twenty-first century with grace, wit, and incredible technical dexterity.” —Kristina Marie Darling
“A book of deep seeing…also a book of intense listening... a series of divine pleasures.” —D.A. Powell
“A dazzling lyrical demonstration... from the highs of great jazz performance to the zen of blood testing for diabetes.” —Lawrence R. Smith
Selected Presenter & Fan Quotes
“She totally captivated the audience. She is an originator, her arrangements are mesmerizing, and her band is great!”
—Gary Hamada, Jazz and Blues Company/KRML-FM, Concert Manager
“Obviously you’re a gigantic talent…you totally controlled the room.”
—Robin Reichert, owner, Paradise Lounge, San Francisco
“You know as a poet and as a singer that you were being heard... from the silence between phrases. I was surprised by many things. First by the quality and range of your voice. When you want to you get a terrific blues quality. The people playing behind you are so good. I especially enjoyed 'Center of the Rhyme' and the Joe Williams song.”
—Philip Levine, former Poet Laureate of the United States
“That was a wonderful show last night. My friend and I had a great time. You were marvelous – charming, funny, astute, original. Your band was exquisite, each and every one of them. Your comfort on the stage and with the band felt assured.”
—B.N.