Lisa Mezzacappa Trio live at Goodbye Blue Monday in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York City performing Push/Pull and What Is Known on March 19, 2009.
lisamezzacappa.com
Lisa Mezzacappa - Bass
Mike Pride - Drums
Chris Welcome - Guitar
Lisa Mezzacappa is a double bassist, composer, collaborator and musical instigator. Her music lives in the intersection of improvisation and composition, and her projects often integrate improvisation-infused composition into public spaces and cross-disciplinary works. She studied bass with Michael Formanek and Peter Spaar, studied improvisation with Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman and John D'earth, and has workshopped with the Sun Ra Arkestra, Bob Moses, Art Baron, Meredith Monk, Terry Riley and David Murray, among others. Lisa has performed at countless Bay Area venues including Intersection for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco; as well as the Earshot Jazz Festival, Seattle; and the Montreal Jazz Festival; Canada.
Lisa has been artist-in-residence at Djerassi Resident Artists Program (2008), Headlands Center for the Arts (2006), the Banff International Jazz Workshop (2000), and the Painted Bride Arts Center (2000). She holds an MA in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley (2003), and a BA in music from the University of Virginia (1997). Lisa has been awarded grants from American Composers Forum, the City of Oakland and Meet the Composer. She currently performs in nearly a dozen original jazz, pop and chamber ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives.
Current projects include Bait and Switch, Lisa's new garage jazz quartet; duo B., a drums and bass duo with Jason Levis; Aaron Bennett's free jazz-meets-metal band Go-Go Fightmaster; CYLINDER, an improvising quartet with Darren Johnston, Aram Shelton and Kjell Nordeson; the trombone reggae band Joseph's Bones; the Beth Custer Ensemble; Scott Larson's ska-roots ensemble Franco Nero; Aaron Novik's Thorny Brocky; Phillip Greenlief's cinema noir trio Citta di Vitti; Cory Wright's creative jazz trio Green Mitchell; and assorted Graham Connah groups. Sometimes she performs with other lovelies such as Myra Melford, Ross Hammond, Mari&233; Abe, Dina Maccabbee, the John Schott/John Hanes duo, Nathan Clevenger, Kasey Knudsen, David James, Ben Goldberg and Smith Dobson Jr.
For Gold Record Studio (2007-8), she co-hosted, with Jon Brumit, a free public recording studio for six weeks at an Oakland neighborhood flea market, assuming the role of record producer, audio engineer and musical instigator. For Earworms (2006-08), a collaboration with installation artist Deborah Aschheim, she composed and recorded 18 pieces, with more than a dozen musicians, for a series of sculptural installations exploring the relationships between music, memory and language. Moths Drink the Tears is a new digital poetry/music collaboration with poet Oni Buchanan.
As curator and ringleader, Lisa programs the annual JAZZPOP music series at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and organizes the quiet films/loud bands film and music series at 21 Grand, Oakland.
myspace.com/lisamezzacappa
