HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Lisa Gary is a singer, songwriter, lyricist, and studio musician. Finding music to be boundless, Lisa’s unique approach to singing bridges the gap between jazz and pop, while combining subtle elements of blues, indie, folk, country, and motown. She inherited her musicality, rhythm, and love for music from her family dating back to her grandfather, a Hungarian classical pianist and her Grandmother, a modern dancer. In a musical household, Lisa grew up surrounded by her father’s passion for jazz and began studying classical trumpet under his wing when she was nine. She went onto train under legendary stars Marni Nixon (The Voice of Hollywood) and Lew Soloff (Blood, Sweat & Tears). Lisa studied Jazz Voice at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music in Montreal and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Jazz Performance with the honor of Outstanding Achievement in Jazz Voice.
After successfully funding her Kickstarter campaign, Lisa’s album Goin’ Your Way was released in August 2019. She recorded with award winning, Grammy-nominated producer and arranger Rob Mounsey. The album features trumpet legend Lew Soloff (Blood, Sweat & Tears), who devastatingly passed away shortly after the album’s completion. Soloff was a mentor to Lisa and helped put together the album, encouraging her to break down musical barriers. Lisa views the music as a tribute to their friendship and hopes others will treasure it as well. Soloff’s featured tracks on Goin’ Your Way are “I’ll Be Seeing You” and “Mercy Mercy Mercy”. “I’ll Be Seeing You” made it onto WBGO 88.3 Jazz’s radio station, dubbed “The Jazz Capitol of the Word”.
In addition to recording, Lisa has been busying crooning the venues of NYC and touring with Postmodern Jukebox. As the featured singer, Lisa and PMJ covered the pop hit “Ex’s and Oh’s” by Elle King. Together they brought the tune back in time to the 1930s, interpreting it in the vintage style of Django Reinhardt. The video garnered hundreds of thousands of views in just a week and is continuing to go viral, with over 1.2 million views. The recording was included in the album PMJ and Chill which reached #1 on the iTunes jazz charts and has over a million streams (a real feat for a jazz tune!). Regularly featured at Birdland, Lisa has sung with The Birdland Big Band, Jane Monheit, and The Birdland Jazz Quartet. Lisa leads performances for various private and corporate events around the country. One of her recent event appearances include being the musical act for Hank Azaria’s Celebrity Poker Night. She has also had the honor to sing along with Billy Joel at one of her weekly New York residencies, where Joel has attended several performances.
Some of Lisa’s accolades include being accepted into the highly prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition in Washington D.C. Lisa was one of 12 semi-finalists selected out of hundreds of submissions from 33 countries. She was also a semifinalist in the Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition in Switzerland. Additional career highlights include headlining the 1st edition of La Fete De La Musique, singing live on Montreal’s top pop radio station Q92.5, and performing the theme song for the Montreal Jazz Festival’s 30th edition DVD press release. As a studio musician, she has recorded vocals for Kathryn Crosby’s tune “Hot Time in the Town of Berlin”, vocal tracks for a CBC broadcast, and various other projects including several DJs and rap artists- two of which were released by Kult Records.
Lisa actively writes, performs, records and possesses the perpetual desire to explore new music and projects in a variety of genres. She is now taking on the recording process herself— watch out for Lisa’s new string of self-produced releases!