Over a career that takes in almost two decades with Dead Can Dance, award-winning movie soundtracks and a series of acclaimed solo and collaborative albums, Lisa Gerrard has established herself as one of the world's most ground-breaking artists.

As a child, Lisa's earliest recollection of becoming aware of her voice was at the tender age of eleven while living in a suburd of Melbourne in Australia. Some of her memories included when she would stand on her garden fence while holding sticks in her hands pointed up to the sky and "singing to God." During those early years, Lisa would start to experiment with singing in different locations including busy city road tunnels in Melbourne where she would improvise with the roar of the rush hour traffic. At this point, Lisa remembers how her fascination with not only her voice but the nature of sound itself began to develop.

Many years later in the early 1980's while in her teens, Lisa started perfroming small solo concerts in various pubs and clubs around Melbourne. It was at this time she met Brendan Perry, who was himself an active member of the music scene. Brendan broke away from his band 'The Marching Girls' to form Dead Can Dance and soon after, invited Lisa to join to help with percussion and some singing. Little did they know that it was the start of a musical odyssey which would bring them international acclaim.

In search of a richer creative environment where their music would be embraced more, Lisa and Brendan travelled to England in search of a record contract leaving behind the comfort of family in Melbourne. Armed with a dmoe, their sound typified by the track 'Frontier' caught the attention of Ivo Watts Russell of cult record company 4AD. After some persuasion, Ivo singed Dead Can Dance which would go on to be a fruitful relationship spanning many years. Over nine albums between 1984 and 1995. Dead Can Dance became one of the world's most extraordinay bands whose proud boast was that they never fit into any neatly manufactured genre or lazy pigeonhole. With Lisa's otherworldly voice, Brendan's mellifluous tones all married by their distinct musicianship, their sound would draw on eclectic influences such as medieval chants, folks ballads, baroque stylings, Celtic flavours and the adoption of emerging electronic synth and sample technology.

The extraordinary mosaic of musical influences is perhaps less surprising in the light of Lisa's childhood in Melbourne, where she recalls Greek, Turkish and Irish melodies "oozing into the streets" of her neighbourhood.

By the mid-90s, amidst changes at 4AD which included Ivo Watts Russell leaving the company, tensions began to grow. Lisa and Brendan's relationship had started to fracture in the changing climate which would ulitmately lead to a mutual and necessary cessation of work; and action which would be hard for their legions of fanatical and adoring fans aroudn the world to ever accept as permanent

 


In 1995 amidst recent motherhood, came Lisa's first solo album, The Mirror Pool, on which she was accompanied by the Victoria Philharmonic Orchestra. Influenced by the separtaion with Brendan, the death of her brother Mark and the birth of her child, 'Mirror Pool' signified a heavily emotional and raw debut which immediately captured the hearts and minds of not only Dead Can Dance fans, but also a whole new audience for Lisa's solo work. Most notably, it also caught the attention of film director Michael Mann who included some of the tracks from 'Mirror Pool' on the soundtrack for the stylish and cult masterpiece 'Heat.'

Lisa's second album 'Duality' which was a collaboration with Pieter Bourke followed in 1998 and again transcended musical eras and genres. Engaging middle-eastern and north African percussion and vocal styles. Lisa and Pieter wove together a tapestry of sonic pulses and rich Arabic flavours which once again would catch the attention of Hollywood. Despite using 'Tempest' and 'Sacrifice' in the film 'The Insider,' Michael Mann went a stage further and asked borth Lisa and Pieter to compose some new work for the film. At exactly the same time, Academy Award winning editor Pietro Scalia had started initial editing of Ridley Scott's 'Gladiator' and chose to use 'Sacrifice' to bring a sense of loss to a key scene in the film. Realising that Michael Mann had already licensed the track, Pietro, Ridley and Hans Zimmer approached Lisa to work on some compositions for the film. Working alongside Zimmer and other Media Ventures composers, Lisa's contribution began to grow leading to a body of work which would go on to win her and Hans a Golden Globe and with it, total international recognition now as a Hollywood composer.

Lisa's third album 'Immortal Memory' was a collaboration with Irish composer Patrick Cassidy who Lisa met while working on 'Gladiator.' Patrick was one of Hans' stable of composers for a short time at Media Ventures and immediately bonded with Lisa. Exploring the themes of spritual devotions with slight liturgical influences, 'Immortal Memory' was a more dense and moody work including a greated sense of Lisa's exploration of her vocal language.

In recent years Lisa has also becom a much sought after composer of soundtracks. Among the films she has scored or contributed to are Ali, Whale Rider, Heat, Baraka, Mission Impossible 2, Black Hawk Down, Tears of The Sun, Nadro, One Perfect Day, Man on Fire, Layer Cake, A Thousand Roads and Fateless. Lisa received Golden Globe nominations for Insider and Ali, Grammy and Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe award for the score of Gladiator and four international awards for Whale Rider.

More recently, Lisa's life and work was covered in the documentary portrait 'Sanctuary: Lisa Gerrard' directed by Clive Collier. This intimate and emotional film captured Lisa's thoughts and creative musings about her work and featured interviews with many of her friends, family and colleagues over the years including Michael Mann, Russell Crowe, Niki Caro, Hans Zimmer and many more.

At the same time, Lisa's fourth and truly solo album 'The Silver Tree' was released. A more epic and expansive work than before, Lisa showed a powerful marriage of cinematic and experimental styles which combined to bring together a deep and more powerful sound than ever before.