Album Notes

San Francisco Bay Area native Lisa Baney has been singing almost as long as she's been making sounds. Raised in a family infused with music (her grandfather was an opera singer, her uncle played stride piano in bars during WWII), she learned to sing harmony at age five with her girl cousins, sitting in the back of her uncle's Plymouth on road trips as he taught them Navy drinking songs in four parts. She was 18 when she had her first paying gig, and put together her first jazz band when she was 20, doing clubs gigs in San Francisco for a pittance plus drinks.

Early on Lisa studied voice with the renowned vocalist Mark Murphy, and then took her musicianship further and got a music degree from Sonoma State University. She studied big band arranging and performance and for a time was pianist with the SSU big band, accompanying various visiting jazz artists, such as John Handy, in the band's concert series. In her senior year she directed the University's jazz choir, which performed many of her jazz vocal arrangements.

Eventually, Lisa branched out from the Bay Area to travel overseas, singing with jazz musicians throughout Western Europe. Back in this country she's sung record dates as backup singer for several songwriters, appeared as featured artist in area big bands, directed and sung in a 4-part female a cappella jazz ensemble, and sung in myriad party and casual ensembles.

Recently, Lisa collaborated with a trio of area jazz players of unusual virtuosity and ability to record a CD of especially challenging songs. With the release of this CD, Lisa shows herself to be a solid, complex, intense and passionate singer of jazz .

"Lisa Baney has the artistic courage to sell a song on its own merits...with such sensual finesse, I could feel the Camembert under the glass getting soft and runny. Her sound is grown up...resonant and rich." (Bruce Bellingham, The San Francisco Examiner)