Lisa Germaine Gerrard is an Australian musician, singer and composer who rose to prominence as part of the music group Dead Can Dance with music partner Brendan Perry.
36 Facts About Lisa Gerrard
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Lisa Gerrard is known for her unique singing style technique, influenced by her childhood spent in multicultural areas of Melbourne.
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Lisa Gerrard has a dramatic contralto voice and has a vocal range of three octaves.
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Lisa Gerrard has been involved in a wide range of projects, starting her first collaborative album in 1998 with Pieter Bourke, and then with various artists throughout her career, who comprised Patrick Cassidy, Klaus Schulze, Hans Zimmer, among others.
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Lisa Gerrard composed and contributed the scores to more than 48 movies.
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Lisa Gerrard received a Golden Globe Award for the music score to the 2000 film Gladiator, on which she collaborated with Hans Zimmer.
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Lisa Gerrard wrote the score of Balibo which went on to win an ARIA award for Best Original Soundtrack and an APRA Screen music award for Best feature film score.
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Lisa Gerrard is often affiliated with the "wailing woman" music phenomena, popularized in Gladiator.
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Lisa Gerrard was born in Melbourne to Irish immigrant parents, and grew up in Prahran, an inner suburb with a substantial Greek population.
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Lisa Gerrard recalled growing up with "Mediterranean music blaring out of the houses" and said that this influenced her music, particularly on later Dead Can Dance albums and in her solo and collaborative works.
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Lisa Gerrard first began forming bands and creating original music as a member of Melbourne's Little Band scene, an experimental post-punk scene which flourished from 1978 until 1981.
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Around this time, Lisa Gerrard became the lead vocalist of Microfilm, which released "Window", and one single, "Centrefold", in 1980, via Unforgettable Music label.
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In 1995, Lisa Gerrard recorded and released her first solo album, The Mirror Pool, accompanied by the Victorian Philharmonic Orchestra.
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Lisa Gerrard began a new collaboration with composer Patrick Cassidy in 2004 with the release of Immortal Memory.
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In 2006, Sanctuary, a documentary about the life and work of Lisa Gerrard, was recorded and released in September.
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On 20 November 2006, Lisa Gerrard released her second solo album, The Silver Tree.
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The tour marked the first time that Lisa Gerrard toured in Australia, with a performance in three cities.
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In November 2007, Lisa Gerrard collaborated with German electronic musician Klaus Schulze on the double-album Farscape.
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In 2009, Lisa Gerrard completed work on the documentary by Australian adventurer Tim Cope called On the Trail of Genghis Khan and contributed her voice to the soundtrack, which began airing in 2010, of the Japanese NHK taiga drama Ryomaden, a story based on the life of Sakamoto Ryoma.
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In October 2009, Lisa Gerrard released her third solo album, The Black Opal.
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Lisa Gerrard collaborated with multi-instrumentalist Prash Mistry, from UK based live dubstep collective Engine Earz Experiment, on a track titled "Spirit Guide", which appeared on his 2011 album.
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On 1 December 2010, Lisa Gerrard released the soundtrack album with Cye Wood titled The Trail of Genghis Khan which contains music from the Lisa Gerrard and Wood score to the documentary TV series by Tim Cope.
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In July 2014, Lisa Gerrard released a new solo album entitled Twilight Kingdom through her own record label, Lisa Gerrard Records.
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In 2014, Lisa Gerrard collaborated with British composer, songwriter and producer, Chicane, on the album The Sum of Its Parts, released on 25 January 2015 by Modena Records.
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Lisa Gerrard's vocals are featured in the video game Armello launched on 1 September 2015, titled "Wyld's Call"; her vocals feature towards a Celtic theme of the soundtracks, released on 2 September 2015, on the music composed by Michael Allen and Lisa Gerrard.
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On 14 March 2018, Lisa Gerrard performed a concert at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia with Genesis Orchestra, conducted by Yordan Kamdzhalov, entitled Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Gorecki.
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Also in 2018, Lisa Gerrard teamed with solo percussionist David Kuckhermann to compose and record an album, Hiraeth, released on 6 August 2018.
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Lisa Gerrard toured as a special guest with the eighteen choir members of the Mystery of Bulgarian Voices, performing fifteen select dates across Europe from 12 March to 20 October 2019.
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Lisa Gerrard participated in a number of musical scores but came to fame as a film composer after recording The Insider in 1999, with Pieter Bourke, and Gladiator in 2000, with Hans Zimmer, which received an Academy Award nomination for best music score, although only Zimmer was nominated.
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In 2005 Lisa Gerrard collaborated with Ennio Morricone for Fateless followed by a collaboration with Jeff Rona on the score for the feature film "A Thousand Roads" and the song On an Ocean for the Henry Poole Is Here score.
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Lisa Gerrard finished 2009 by contributing her voice to the theme song for the Japanese NHK taiga drama Ryomaden, which began airing in 2010.
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In 2010 Lisa Gerrard completed the score for Tears of Gaza with Marcello De Francisci which was well received despite its controversial theme.
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Lisa Gerrard scored the Jim Loach-directed Oranges and Sunshine, starring Emily Watson and Hugo Weaving, released in April 2011, which gained her another nomination at the 2011 IF Awards for Best Music Score.
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In November 2010 Lisa Gerrard provided vocals and additional music for the post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller Priest, scored by Christopher Young, which was released in 2011.
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In November 2011 Lisa Gerrard completed the score for Burning Man, which won her Best Music Score at the 2012 Film Critics Circle of Australia awards, beating scores for Snowtown, The Hunter and Red Dog.
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Lisa Gerrard possesses the vocal range of a contralto but can reach upward into the dramatic mezzo-soprano range.