Lisa Lindsley

Jazz vocalist Lisa Lindsley Ignites the City of Lights with her second album Long After Midnight, a gorgeous and playful program of familiar and overlooked standards recorded in Paris. Our single, Long After Midnight broke into the Top40 at #35 and stayed for 3 weeks, it also stayed in the Jazz CMJ charts for 7 weeks hovering in the Top 5. Jazz vocalist Lisa Lindsley says that moving to Paris for a year was an idea proposed by her daughter, an aspiring high school contortionist who wanted to hone her French while studying at the Fratellini Circus School. Much to her daughter’s surprise, Lindsley put the plan in motion, and turned the adventure into the next step in her remarkable musical evolution. While her daughter decided return to the states after six months to tour with a circus in Vermont, Lindsley settled into the 19th arrondissement and quickly developed a network of regular gigs with skilled accompanists. She documents these relationships on her second album, Love After Midnight, a gorgeous collection of sultry songs on her Take One Music label that’s available in Europe (and digitally) May 13, and in the USA June 10, 2016. Lindsley is no slouch at making a powerful first impression. A late blooming artist who came to jazz singing in mid-life, she earned national attention with her stellar 2010 debut release Everytime We Say Goodbye, an intimate session featuring bassist Fred Randolph and superlative accompanist George Mesterhazy (pianist for Shirley Horn and Paula West). She’s been working steadily around the Bay Area over the past decade, but when she and her daughter relocated to Paris in the fall of 2013 Lindsley put everything on hold, including her prolific career as a voice-over artist of considerable celebrity. As the voice of Princess Leia in LeapFrog’s Star Wars game and the characters Soraka and Kayle in Riot Games’ hugely popular online game League of Legends “I get fan mail and fans cry when they meet me,” Lindsley says. Far more than a souvenir of her year-long adventure, Long After Midnight is a fully realized statement from an artist with a discerning ear for overlooked material and a sure sense of songs ideally suited for her pleasingly smoky soprano. Working with a stellar coterie of Parisian players, she delivers an irresistible program featuring pianist Laurent Merode, drummer Mourad Benhammou, Esaie Cid on flute, clarinet and tenor saxophone, and Bay Area bass master Jeff Chambers (the Paris session’s only ringer). “Jeff used to play in Paris a lot. As soon as he walked into the studio Mourad Benhammou said ‘I saw you play with Bobby Hutcherson 20 years ago.’ We went in and laid down 15 songs in the first day. It was the Mesterhazy thing all over again,” says Lindsley, referring to the copacetic studio chemistry that pervaded her debut album. With her relaxed phrasing and unfussy approach to arrangements, Lindsley fully claims several oft-recorded songs as her own. Womanly and girlish, romantic and carnal, spirited and introverted, Lindsley comfortably inhabits a full range of roles and sensibilities. She’s a jazz singer who knows that the music is at its best when it flows from lived experience. While she’s a relative latecomer to the bandstand, she’s been around the music her entire life. She grew up listening to jazz greats like Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan because her father kept jazz and classical music playing on the stereo. Her mother, a film actress who had to leave Hollywood in the 1950s because of the McCarthy-era blacklist, imbued in her a love of theater. While as a young teen Lindsley gravitated to the rock and pop music of the day, she discovered musical theater in high school, a passion that carried through to college. After graduating from the prestigious California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) theater program, she spent a decade touring and performing with The Imagination Company. Raising two daughters put her performing ambitions on hold for years, but she developed a successful career as a voice over artist, cast in national ad campaigns, radio shows and video games. Just like her daughter led her to Paris, Lindsley found her way back to music when her daughters got involved in musical theater. Her work as Vicky in a production of “The Full Monty” caught the attention of the bartender at a jazzspot in the East Bay artist colony of Pt. Richmond, and he invited her to sit in at a jam session. The experience was an epiphany, and realizing the jazz was an ideal creative outlet Lindsley delved into the Bay Area’s rich pool of jazz education. She honed her skills with Roger Letson at Contra Costa College, and studied with Maye Cavallero, Laurie Antonioli and Pamela Rose at the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley. In turning herself into the consummate professional, Lindsley has also turned into a powerfully expressive artist whose debut album announced the emergence of a formidable creative force. With Long After Midnight, Lindsley makes a major leap as a vocalist fully in charge of her sound and repertoire. It’s an album for blissful late-night listening that leaves you wondering what the next day has to offer. -30-

Oakland, CA