Lisa B merges singing, songwriting, and spoken word in a way that’s unique in today’s jazz and pop. While reaching a broad range of listeners, Lisa B sidesteps the predictable and melts the boundaries of genre.

On her third CD, What’s New, Pussycat?: Tunes & Tales about Cool Cats (released summer 2006), Lisa B explores the magical contrasts embodied by the cat (and personified by humans): “both wild and cozy, passionate and independent, playful and fierce,” in her words. The new CD combines original compositions with Lisa B’s refreshing take on familiar songs by Burt Bacharach/Hal David, Graham Nash, and Cole Porter. The new album again features some of the Bay Area's best jazz musicians: Frank Martin and Ben Flint (keyboards), Danny Caron (guitar), Chris Amberger, Troy Lampkins, and John Shifflett (bass), Paul van Wageningen and Alan Hall (drums), and John Santos (percussion). (You can order the CD from this site using Paypal, and all you need is credit card information. Click here .)

What's New, Pussycat? is now available on itunes!:  http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playListId=167824648 

Raised in New York and Northern California in a jazz- and literature-filled home, Lisa B was influenced by the many jazz musicians she knew since childhood, including such friends of her parents as Jackie McLean and the members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. She also was inspired by soul, pop, and show tunes. She studied piano since elementary school and wrote songs and stories. She wrote and studied poetry seriously since her teens, going on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in creative writing at UC Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University.

Two books of her poetry have been published, Anorexia (Five Fingers Poetry) and The Transparent Body (Wesleyan University Press). Her poems have appeared in more than 50 literary magazines and anthologies. She has received grants and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Ucross Foundation, and Money for Women.

Lisa B’s many public poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay Area evolved into performances. One was a two-night, sold-out piece at the leading experimental theatre The Lab that included dancers and live music. Lisa B then began to focus on songwriting, singing, and music, studying first at the Blue Bear School of Music, then with renowned Bay Area vocal coach Jane Sharp. Lisa was soon gigging frequently, performing jazz and selected pop standards along with her own compositions. She has performed at more than 70 clubs, performance spaces, colleges, bookstores, and radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York.

Lisa B's three full-length CDs and one EP have featured mainly original compositions along with a few beautifully reconceived standards. Both the originals and the covers are often infused with her unique "poetry-rap," and all are delivered with her heartfelt, unique, and sophisticated vocalizing.

While often composing lyrics and music on her own, Lisa B also enjoys co-writing with musicians, including singer-pianist Barbara Higbie (Windham Hill, women’s music) and Latin jazz trombonist-arranger Wayne Wallace (Patois Records). A frequent collaborator is her longtime producer/engineer, the composer Jim Gardiner (Pharoah Sanders, Rickie Lee Jones, David Grisman, Seattle Symphony, and numerous Bay Area rap and soul artists).

Lisa B’s spirit of inventive collaboration also yields new versions of existing compositions. Her previous record CENTER OF THE RHYME contains two such transformations: her poetic homage “Joe Williams Died Walking” performed with “Every Day I Have the Blues” and Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love” with new poem-raps composed by Lisa. On her previous record FREE ME FOR THE JOY, Lisa B’s heartrending poem “Trane’s Ride” is performed with Coltrane’s “Naima.”  

Lisa B’s first recording, the EP BE THE WORD was played on more than 120 noncommercial and commercial radio stations nationwide in jazz, triple A, alternative, and new adult contemporary formats, charting or in heavy or medium rotation on a third of them.

The 1999 FREE ME FOR THE JOY is Lisa B’s first full-length release, on her own Piece of Pie Records. All originals except for one collaboration with Coltrane’s “Naima,” it includes such stellar players as John Santos (Machete) and Curtis Ohlson (Ray Charles’ band). FREE ME FOR THE JOY was added to the playlists of more than 85 commercial and noncommercial radio stations across the country in 1999-2000, including charting and heavy rotation. It was played in jazz, smooth jazz, college, triple A, women’s, new age, and other formats, with reporting by trade magazines R&R, Gavin, and CMJ.

CENTER OF THE RHYME, released in 2003, was a huge step forward in Lisa B’s creative development—jazzier and more acoustic than her previous release and revealing an evolved singing voice, new tunes that listeners won’t forget, and “an emotional range that makes lyrics sound like truth” (critic Ted Panken). Many of the Bay Area’s best jazz players appear, including Frank Martin (keyboards), Mimi Fox and Dave Yamasaki (guitar), Bill Douglass and Chris Amberger (bass), Paul van Wageningen (drums), Michael Spiro (percussion), and Daria (vocals). CENTER OF THE RHYME was played on more than 120 jazz and smooth jazz stations and shows throughout the U.S.

Now WHAT'S NEW, PUSSYCAT?, inspired by the feline as a metaphor for the human, takes the listener on a journey that is delightful and deep, playful and powerful, cool and hot. Lisa B writes and sings about the magical and the everyday, bravery and tenderness, and the interdependent dance of love.

SEE MORE ON LISA'S MYSPACE PAGE:  http://www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein