Lisa grew up in the Pacific Northwest among towering Douglas firs, blackberry brambles, and persistent rain. Her mother's parlor grand piano looked out on the wide Willamette Valley and the Cascade mountains beyond. Lisa studied classical violin throughout her early youth, but after several years, she realized that her greatest joy came from singing. Enchanted by the music of Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, and Fiona Apple, she resolved with all her youthful energy to teach herself to play the piano in order to write songs from her own sweet and eager 11-year-old heart. Now, just 14 years later, Lisa has already had a remarkable career. While working on a degree in Woman's and Gender Studies, she was music director, writer, arranger and vocalist for the University of Oregon's award-winning woman's a cappella group, Divisi.
A seasoned performer from her years of work in musical theatre and opera productions, symphony, jazz and festival choirs, as well as countless a cappella shows, Lisa decided to take her career to a new level in 2006 when she moved to the opposite coast to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Under a prestigious and hefty Vocal Performance scholarship, Lisa honed her craft, delving deeper into songwriting, performance, theory and improvisation, all the while performing her original compositions on campus and around the Boston area. Determined to prove that being a full-time musician wasn't just a pipe dream, Lisa took a year off in 2008 to pursue her music career in Portland, OR. During this time she created her own private teaching studio, worked as a choir teacher for Ethos Music Center, and won the Portland Songwriter's Association's "Songwriter of the Year" Award, among many other things. Lisa returned to Berklee in the fall of 2009 to much success: two of her musical theater compositions were selected for Berklee's Musical Theater Writing Showcase and her original "Going My Way" was selected for the Women Musicians Network Concert as well as the Perfect Pitch Songwriting Competition. In an effort to combine her passion for social justice with music, Lisa also founded and chaired Musicians Against Sexual Violence, or MASsiVe: a Berklee organization working to unite men and women in the fight to end sexual violence. Lisa received a Berklee Urban Service Award for her work with MASsiVe, and her song "Solidarity," written for the same cause, received the Runner-Up prize in Berklee's Songwriting and Social Change contest. After graduating Summa Cum Laude in May of 2010, Lisa moved back to the West Coast with a B.M in Professional Music, plenty of spirited ambition and two records released: "Between You and Me," her full-length debut album and "With Her Heart In Her Mouth" a concept-EP, both available at www.cdbaby.com. Lisa currently resides with her fiancé in the San Francisco Bay Area where she continues to pursue her career as a singer, composer, music director, educator and activist.