Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) ~ Music, Poetry, The Culture, My Life

New video of Lisa B's cover of Matishyahu's "Miracle"

2011-12-19T15:29:00.000-08:00

I had a lot of fun with my maiden homemade video. Almost makes up for failing grade-school art.

Download the tune from CDBaby or iTunes:
http://www.cdbaby.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?AlbumID=lisablisabernstein3

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/miracle-single/id48927021

" 'Miracle' uses the multi-track guitar work of Andre Bush. Lisa B... matches the tricky cadence well, digging out new meaning from the Matisyahu tune while maintaining the original's sensibility." - Jordan Richardson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Blogcritics.com

Also on the Hanukkah / Chanukah tip: The album from which "Miracle" comes has a lovely orchestral version of "Hine Ma Tov," with a new translation by me.

"Well-toasted chestnuts... Her lower register serves her best on 'Hine Ma Tov," with a shimmering, layered orchestration." - Kirk Silsbee, Los Angeles Times

They're both from my new album ("Christmas Time Is Here (and Chanukah and the Solstice))," http://www.lisabmusic.com/cds_books.html Lots of songs by Jews (some of which are Christmas songs)!

"The sure-bet holiday music that should be playing in hipper households over the next few months. Tasty throughout." - Chris Spector, Midwest Record
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My versions of Matisyahu song "Miracle" and "Hine Ma Tov" for Chanukah / Hanukkah now on iTunes - nice comment in new review

2011-12-16T19:03:00.000-08:00

I was surprised to discover that in late November 2011 (this year), Matisyahu released five new versions of his great Chanukah / Hanukkah song "Miracle," and the Maccabees also offered their take on the tune.

My version of "Miracle" first appeared as part of my CD released in late October 2011, "Christmas Time Is Here (and Chanukah and the Solstice)" -- and it just went up as a single on iTunes a few days ago! http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/miracle-single/id489270215

It's also available as a single on the great indie music site, CDBaby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lisablisabernstein3

My new holiday album got a thoughtful, extensive review from Jordan Richardson yesterday on Blogcritics that was immediately picked up by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Music-Review-Lisa-B-Christmas-Time-is-Here-2406244.php.

About "Miracle" -- and the other Jewish song on the record, "Hine Ma Tov" -- Richardson writes:

"Christmas Time is Here (and Chanukah and the Solstice)" is a vibrant, diverse holiday record that sees Lisa B working through a number of Christmas standards, originals, and Jewish tunes with an energy that is enchanting... Along with the usual fare, the San Francisco Bay-based performer engages with the Hebrew hymn "Hine Ma Tov" and Matisyahu's "Miracle."... [Her] risk-taking continues with... "Hine Ma Tov"... [an] orchestral number accented by bells... the arrangement is... subtle and Lisa's vocals stand out... "Miracle" uses the multi-track guitar work of Andre Bush. Lisa B varies her tone a number of times and matches the tricky cadence well, digging out new meaning from the Matisyahu tune while maintaining the original's sensibility."

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New Hanukkah single written by Matisyahu, "Miracle"

2011-12-08T23:51:00.000-08:00

New on CDBaby -- the latest single from my holiday CD: "Miracle," composed by the Brooklyn Hasidic reggae artist Matisyahu. A rousing and spiritual song about Hanukkah / Chanukah! In this new version, I'm singing to the accompaniment of the wonderful guitarist Andre Bush.

Please enjoy, and spread the word! http://www.cdbaby.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?AlbumID=lisablisabernstein3

"Miracle" also should be up soon on iTunes, but until then, you can hear a longish sample and download it as a single song from the album it's on. And while you're there, check out my orchestral version of "Hine Ma Tov" (with a new translation by me). http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/christmas-time-is-here-chanukah/id477308876?ign-mpt=uo%3D4

As the days get darker, we find more illumination somehow, don't we?

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Notes on the songs: "Christmas Time Is Here (and Chanukah and the Solstice)"

2011-11-28T14:50:00.000-08:00

Notes by Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) on her new CD “Christmas Time Is Here (and Chanukah and the Solstice)”

1. The composition “Christmas Time Is Here” evokes nuances of Christmas that aren’t found in any other song – a keen awareness of the holiday’s beauty as well as the unresolved melancholy underneath it. When co-producer Jim Gardiner (whose background includes writing for the Seattle Symphony) told me he wanted to make an orchestral track, I was thrilled, and I was even more thrilled when I heard his mixture of Henry Mancini and Steve Reich, sleighbells and dissonance. With my singing, I aimed to convey the sense of experiencing Christmas privately even amid the surrounding jolliness, and a vivid encounter with “the spirit” at the tune’s end that both redeems and amplifies its haunting atmosphere.

2. The Hebrew hymn “Hine Ma Tov” continues the orchestral approach. It uses both of the traditional treatments of the song, stately and folk-danceable. Since the song is often heard at Shabbat feasts and sometimes on Chanukah, I couldn’t resist it – especially as it gave me the chance to write a new translation of the lyrics.

3. “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!” is the tune that sparked my desire to do this record – swinging, flirty, continuing the theme of the fire in the fireplace and underlining the passion and connection that the fire signifies. This track introduces the marvelous live trio of Adam Shulman, piano, John Wiitala, bass, and Alan Hall, drums.

4. “My Favorite Things” has loomed large in my life since I encountered both the John Coltrane and Julie Andrews classic versions at about the same time, and I’ve been singing it for years. The musicality and fervor of the band, including Alan’s hard-driving drumming and Adam’s passionate solo, helped inspire me to innovate some new lyrics after it, which continue the motif of finding and honoring one’s own truth.

5. “Miracle” is a duet with the sparkling, multi-track guitar work Andre Bush, in my first time working with him, though we’ve known each other for many years. It’s the second Chanukah song on the record (though it’s worth noting that all the tracks on the record except 6 and 7 have at least one Jewish writer). The American Hasidic reggae artist Matisyahu released “Miracle” in December 2010, contributing a much-needed additional Chanukah song to the holiday repertoire. Both lovely and rousing, it speaks in the voice of someone who is overtaken by his/her private spiritual communication with God but still filled with zeal to encourage all who are listening to keep searching, and to believe that “him who searches will find.” With its many references to candles, fire, shining, sunrise, and light, Miracle again reminds us of why we conjure up brightness during the dark time of the year.

6. “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” brings back the trio, with a gospel-shuffle arrangement by Adam Shulman that adds some downhome joy to the spectrum of celebration on this record.

7. I’ve always loved Donny Hathaway’s performance of “This Christmas,” which he co-wrote, and it was a perfect fit for the record as a playfully romantic song for the holiday in which happiness extends to family and community too. You may not notice that helping to propel the tune are tasty shifts from 4/4 to 3/4. Background vocalist Anna Lissa Patterson, with Jim Gardiner’s expert mixing, creates a lush bed to play in.

8. “Holiday in Oakland,” the record’s first original, celebrates the Northern California city – or the Town, as locals call it – where I’ve lived for 20 years. A rap at the center lauds some of the musical greats who originated here. The holiday I keep saying we should take isn’t limited to Christmas! The old-school track by Jim Gardiner calls up Bump City, and the inspired background vocals by Anna Lissa Patterson, an Oakland native, truly represent. This song was made entirely in Oakland.

9. Also an original, “The Flame” lights the fire again, but reminds us that sequestering ourselves with loved ones during the holiday can’t seal us away from the world’s tumult and destruction. Being aware of others’ suffering – and our own – is painful, but the pain dissipates when we “find the golden flame in ourselves” and take some action to help our communities. Starting out spoken in time to a lush track, the song ends with a cappella singing that returns to the song’s initial reference to a timeless flame that curls in the dark of winter and the Name within it, hidden but bright. And it recasts the hearth as one that we make together, to create peace on earth.

10. I wrote “Winter Solstice” as a poem, as opposed to a rap or a spoken-word piece, and it’s spoken in free verse, out of time. Still, the lovely track adds enormously to its flavor. What you hear is a one-take vocal with musical accompaniment by Jim that emerged rapidly – a testament to the communication finely honed between us over almost two decades of collaboration.

11. We couldn’t resist offering an instrumental version of “Christmas Time Is Here” to close the record. Allow yourself to come full circle, and amid the orchestra’s strings and brass and timpani to experience your own Christmas – the spirit that is you, and the other spirit that is near.

copyright 2011 Lisa Bernstein

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Hear full-length streams of all songs here: http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/3470178

Purchase songs or CDs -- and please write customer reviews!:

iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/christmas-time-is-here-chanukah/id477308876?uo=4 or www.itunes.com/lisab

Amazon:
(please buy new; used ones are promos or bootlegs others are reselling) http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Time-Here-Chanukah-Solstice/dp/B005YFBA28

CDBaby--a great site for indie music:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lisablisabernstein2

Thanks and enjoy!

"Christmas Time Is Here (and Chanukah and the Solstice)" available on Amazon and CDBaby

2011-10-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

"Christmas Time Is Here (and Chanukah and the Solstice)" is available on

Amazon http://amzn.to/uq7RJo ,

CDBaby http://bit.ly/vwqGFB, and

itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/christmas-time-is-here-chanukah/id477308876?uo=4 or
www.itunes.com/lisab

Full-length streams:

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/3470178

Please enjoy, and support independent music on the holiday!
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The Singer's Life: Where Do You Start (And How Do You Keep Going)?

2011-10-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

Are you a singer? Do you want to become one?
Check out the workshop I'm giving at the Jazzschool in Berkeley, Calif.!

Sunday, October 30, 2011, Noon - 3:00 p.m.
www.jazzschool.com
2087 Addison St., Berkeley CA 94704 (510) 845-5373
$50 advance, $65 at the door

The Singer's Life: Where Do You Start (And How Do You Keep Going)?

A workshop for singers who want to get started with manifesting their dreams -- and keep manifesting them. This is not a performance class, but a class that will help you perform more regularly, by first identifying your goals and then putting together a plan to achieve them. Students have the opportunity to tell the story of where they are as singers and where they'd like to be, using writing exercises to help define personal goals. Instructor Lisa B outlines the various aspects of a singer's life, from education to songwriting to performance and promotion. She then brainstorms with each student and provides advice about specific steps on the path -- for the next year and beyond.

We'll be working (and playing) within three main areas:
I. Your initial dream of being a singer, your purposes as a singer now, and aligning your singer activities so you feel your own power and well-being.
II. The various pieces of a singer's life.
III. Setting and accomplishing short- and long-term goals.

I can't wait!
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Lisa B on:
itunes: www.itunes.com/lisab
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-B/e/B000APFBT0/ref=ac_dpt_sa_link/189-6228384-6601816
cdbaby: www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
website: www.lisabmusic.com

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"Holiday in Oakland" - the new single!

2011-10-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

The first single from my winter holiday CD just went up on CDBaby at http://cdbaby.com/cd/lisablisabernstein and www.itunes.com/lisab. "Holiday in Oakland"! A positive tune about my Town for any holiday, especially celebrating the music originating here.

The old-school-with-a-new-twist track is by Jim (James) Gardiner (composer, educator, producer, engineer, and friend), who runs Gardiner Music Mentoring and Pajama Recording Studios near Jack London Square in Oakland.

Oakland native Anna Lissa Patterson sang the background vocals, creating both downhome excitement and a luscious ambience (her contribution also put the sheen on "This Christmas," on the CD).

Go download it! Click on the image at right to go to CDBaby or go to iTunes, which gives a nice long sample including the rap. (But on my iTunes page are some songs by the UK-based model-actress-singer Lisa B, who isn't me and is a lot more famous.) I'm donating 50% of profits to fund a kids' poetry workshop at the Allendale Rec Center (not far from my house).

Here are the lyrics:

Holiday in Oakland

Let’s take a holiday in Oakland

Let’s take a walk around the lake

With the lovers and the runners

The kids of every color holding hands

In Oaktown

Let’s take a holiday in Oakland

Let’s take a break and eat some grits and greens

Potstickers and beef chow mein

Crabs we caught today in the bay

In Oaktown

In the winters we don’t freeze

In the summers it’s a breeze

Under redwoods in the park

Soul and salsa after dark

Drive down Christmas Lane

See the galaxies explained

At Chabot, watch the moon turn to gold

Let’s take a holiday in Oakland

Let’s hear the music that we made:

(rap)

Tower of Power, Y&T

Goapele and Michael Franti

Tony Toni, Del the Funky Homo Sapien

Digital Underground in Raider Nation

The Pointer Sisters and Pete Escovedo

Redwood Records, Oaktown Jazz, livin’ their credos

Kitka, Keak da Sneak, En Vogue, and Hammer

The Hawkins Singers and Pharoah Sanders

In the winters we don’t freeze

In the summers it’s a breeze

Under redwoods in the park

Soul and salsa after dark

Drive down Christmas Lane

See the galaxies explained

At Chabot, watch the moon turn to gold

Take a holiday, oh yeah

Throw all your worries away

You can slide under the bay to San Francisco

But you better come on home

Go deep in the east

And just settle in the west

Amble down Grand and strut your best on Broadway

Dip your finger in the water in Jack London Square

Run to the hills and inhale the air

Come to my house and just sway in the hammock with me

I’m in Oaktown

That’s where I’m gonna stay

That’s where I work and it’s work I play

In Oaktown

(Let’s take a holiday in Oakland!)

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The "Holiday in Oakland" single: http://cdbaby.com/cd/lisablisabernstein

itunes: www.itunes.com/lisab
cdbaby: www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

www.lisabmusic.com

Gardiner Music Mentoring: A Great Program, Expanding Now

2011-08-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to tell you about Gardiner Music Mentoring, a program for youth 14 and up as well as adults. GMM provides one-to-one and small group mentoring and lessons on all aspects of musical development -- all within the world-class Pajama Studios near Jack London Square in Oakland.

Know a young person involved in music who would flourish in an alternative learning setting?

Seeking to expand your skills in audio engineering, music composition, or performance?

Gardiner Music Mentoring will tailor a program to meet your starting point, goals, learning style and schedule. You can study:

•Music composition, theory, and orchestration
•Recording, mixing, and mastering
•Instrumental and vocal technique and performance
•Creating your own CD and producing CDs by other artists
•The evolving music business and your career planning and launch

Gardiner Music Mentoring features personal instruction from Jim (James) Gardiner as well as an amazing array of mentors who are working musicians. Jim has an unmatched range of skills: composition (he was composer in residence for the Seattle Symphony), audio engineering (Grammy nominations and 42 gold- or platinum-certified records), and producing. His program's mentors include some of the best the Bay Area has to offer, with more being added each month.

Jim has a magic touch with kids, providing a framework of both creativity and discipline, and a special ability to communicate. And he does pretty well with grownups too -- as I can attest.

Check out Gardiner Music Mentoring's curriculum, testimonials, and more: http://www.gardinermusicmentoring.com.

Week-long summer camp sessions start in August, and weekly lessons as well as more immersive programs are ongoing.

A great place for you or a young person you know to take the next step in musical development -- whether it's learning about recording and mixing with the latest technology, in a real-live studio environment; getting started on your first symphony; or being guided and assisted at every step in creating your next CD.

Feel free to write or call me to find out more at (510) 336-3276, or contact Jim at (323) 481-1590.

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Lisa B on:
itunes: www.itunes.com/lisab
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-B/e/B000APFBT0/ref=ac_dpt_sa_link/189-6228384-6601816
www.lisabmusic.com
cdbaby: www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

Free S.F. Show 8/6/11, Women Rock 5th Anniversary

2011-08-06T13:13:00.000-07:00

I'm performing 8/6/11 at 9:40 p.m in San Francisco at a FREE show to celebrate Women Rock's 5th anniversary. See details below on performers, who hail from many genres. Kids' acts start the day. Potluck and grill will be set up. Drinks for sale.

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The Box Factory, 865 Florida St. at 21st St.

San Francisco, CA

Saturday August 6, 2:00 p.m. - Sunday at 2:00 a.m.
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WomenROCK, a women's music collective, is celebrating five years of vitality with a magical free day of music, dance, visual and performance art. The event will be part of MAPP (Mission Arts & Performance Project). Cosponsored by sfnow.org. Donations can be made to Homobiles, a Safe Queer Car Service open to all (founded by a musician).

Here's the awesome line up for the day (starting with three kid-friendly acts in a row, so bring ...the family!):

2:00-2:20 Revolutionary Girls
This SF tween sensation plays venues like Earth Day and Harmony Festival because there is a message to their music. Listen up!

2:25-2:50 Making Dinner (for kids!)
An all-female San Francisco favorite that has been labeled indie, folk, and pop. Making Dinner takes over the stage the way the smell of cookies baking takes over a kitchen. www.makingdinnertheband.com

2:55-3:20 Essence (for kids!)
In her decade long span as a recording artist, essence has earned a devoted following, sold thousands of CDs, had songs placed prominently in film and television, won international songwriting contests and performed in some the nation's most prestigious venues opening for artists like Tom Petty, Jason Mraz, Shawn Colvin, and Sarah McLachlan. www.essencemusic.com

3:25-3:50 Candace Roberts & The Forever Bridesmaids
In a cotton-candy world of shimmering girl-group harmonies and clever cabaret . our heroine makes her way through a minefield of tubas, handbags and plentiful pork products.
www.candaceroberts.com

3:55-4:15 Aoede
Compelling pop for your heart by a singer-songwriter with an enchantingly quirky soprano voice. Recipient of a "Top Album of the Decade" honor, and "Top Artist of the Year" for 2008, by WomensRadio.com, she is one-in-a-million, but it's not only for the reasons one would expect. www.aoedemuse.com

4:20-4:40 ANANTA
ANANTA rocks her audience with the electric fiddle, cello, beats and hula-hoop in her solo show and her repertoire includes soul, jazz, hip-hop, rock, celtic, middle eastern, indian classical and alternative trance styles. www.reverbnation.com/anant?afiddlehooper

4:45-5:10 Pamela Parker
San Francisco's freshest soul sister, Pamela Parker serves up a blend of juicy, bluesy, soulful, funky music and sets out to deeply touch her audience with songs about life, love, and creating positive changes in the world.
www.pamelaparkermusic.com

5:15-5:40 Vanessa VerLee
For over a decade Vanessa has been a staple singer-songwriter in the San Francisco scene. Her voice stops crowds and her melodies leaves them humming. She'll be joined by her partner in music and life, Jeremy Rourke, a celebrated animator and songwriter himself. www.vanessaverlee.com

5:45-6:05 The Sugar Highs
Playing together for four years now, these two snappily dressed jazz songstresses, Andrea Shippy and Kate Baker, do unique and original tunes as well as classics from the great American songbook. The sound will leave you on a (Sugar) High! www.andreashippy.com

6:05 Introduction of evening emcee, Siobhan "OneMama-ShaBoom" Neilland
Siobhan Neilland, founder of the non-profit OneMama, represents the heart of the OneMama organization. OneMama helps improvised woman have babies safely in rural communities in Africa. Passionate about making a difference in the world, Siobhan created OneMama to show those in need that they are loved and matter in this world. www.OneMama.org

6:10-6:35 The Heated
The moniker of singer/songwriter Cristina Espinosa, The Heated provides endearing lo-fi, yet accomplished, indie folk/Americana. One bar breaks thrown into the center of songs, off-kilter rhythms and unexpected melodies dot the musical landscape. www.theheated.com

6:45-7:10 Bitter Mystics
Smooth and sultry vocals backed by masterful violin and
acoustic guitars energizing original songs spanning genres from bluegrass to folk to pop to swing. www.bittermystics.com

7:15-7:40 Audrey Howard & The Misters
"(These) San Francisco underground scene favorites perform tight-knit rock driven by Audrey's mind-blowing, real-life guitar hero riffage" - Fabulosa Fest // www.audreyhoward.net

7:45-8:10 ZIVA
Born and raised in a small kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley in Israel, ZIVA's music is a blend of rock, pop, jazz and R&B, delivered with powerful expressive vocals, rich harmonies and exotic rhythms. www.zivamusic.com

8:15-8:30 Emily Butterfly
Happily self-employed at Emily Butterfly Productions, she serves as creatress of many genres including: Cartoon Voice Over, Puppet Fabricator, Puppeteer, Illustrator, Story, Song and Script Writer. She performs for children and adults in schools, hospitals, prisons, speakeasies, festivals and clubs and have reached over 50,000 elementary school children in the Bay Area, Ca with a show promoting walking and biking to school.
www.emilybutterfly.com

8:40-9:05 Castles In Spain
Castles in Spain's unique sonic agenda melds tribal rhythms, cinematic and atmospheric vibes and even Middle Eastern and Spanish influences into a sensuously soulful and melodically ethereal style. www.castlesinspain.com

9:10-9:25 Drag w/ Jesse Sangria & Persia

9:30-9:35 Luscious Ladies Burlesque Dance Troupe

9:40-10:05 Lisa B. (Lisa Bernstein)
This singer-poet merges jazz, soul, pop, world, and electronic music with vivid, poetic spoken word. She has released 4 CDs with national radio charting and press, has had two poetry books published, and performed at 80+ venues from the Elbo Room to Stanford University. www.lisabmusic.com.

10:10-10:35 Dana Carmel
Dana's haunting melodies and sometimes unconventional chord progressions have a way of entering your head and staying there for days. She manages to express what you may not find the right words for and in the end you are so happy to sing along to.
www.danacarmel.com

10:40-11:05 Whitney Nichole
Whitney Nichole blends storytelling lyrics and strong melodies for a captivating and compelling soulful indie-pop style. www.whitneynichole.com

11:10-11:30 Maria Konner
Guitarist & keyboardist with the band Sex Industry, Maria will be playing a few acoustic guitar songs. Maria has performed in many spots throughout town either playing with the band, or doing tunes on the piano or guitar. www.sexindustryband.com

11:35-11:45 Rasa Vitalia
Arguably San Francisco's leading highly creative and very unique Dance Artists, Rasa Vitalia performs around the world, celebrating the essence of life with her truly creative dance called "Rasa Dance." Rasa Dance is Global Dance: A unique experience of universal movement through dance & music- The rhythm of life.
/www.RasaVitalia.com

11:50-12:15 bernadette

12:20-12:45 Gabby La La
www.gabbylala.com

12:50-1:15 London Street
www.londonstreetmusic.com

1:20-1:45 Drag with Shaky Gibson, Divinity Fudge & Samatha Klever Samuelroy (and his alterego Samatha Klever) composes his own music, sings, raps and collaborates with such drag queens as Miss Rahni, Kallisto and Lady Bear, along with others.

1:45-2:00 Dance Party

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Lisa B on:
itunes: www.itunes.com/lisab
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-B/e/B000APFBT0/ref=ac_dpt_sa_link/189-6228384-6601816
www.lisabmusic.com
cdbaby: www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

poems in Caliban Online #2

2011-02-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

The wonderful poetry magazine Caliban has been resurrected online, and I'm thrilled to have poems from my just-revised manuscript "Post-War Persephone" in its second issue. Check out http://www.calibanonline.com/.

Since I wanted to let folks know of Caliban's foundation, I asked editor Larry Smith to tell me about some previous contributors. He sent me the partial list below, saying, "The original Caliban published from 1986-1996. In many ways, it was a successor to kayak, and many of the regulars from kayak became regulars in Caliban. Raymond Carver was one of our early big promoters. There are many more noteworthy contributors. (We were the first publishers of Sherman Alexie, for example.)" Smith not only was inspired by the pioneering kayak -- he also got a lot of direct help in launching his mag from its publisher, George Hitchcock, who was one of my poetry mentors at UC Santa Cruz.

The new issue is an exciting one, with Rosemarie Waldrop and Colette Inez among others, wonderful visual art, and the unique "Contributors' Advice."

Writers and readers, check it out and send your work. PDFs can be purchased for under a buck. Smith welcomes poetry, fiction, art, and even music and short videos from "those who consider themselves avant-garde or progressive (and even those who don't, but who are serious)."

Here are some of the writers Caliban previously published.

Will Alexander, William Burroughs, Robert Bly, Amiri Baraka, Charles Bernstein, Lisa Bernstein (Lisa B), Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Raymond Carver, Wanda Coleman, Clark Coolidge, Louise Erdrich, Russell Edson, Forrest Gander, Michael Harper, Jim Harrison, Lyn Hejinian, Colette Inez, Robert Kelly, Maxine Hong Kingston, Yusef Komunyakaa, Philip Levine, Michael McClure, Tom McGrath, W.S. Merwin, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Antonio Porta, Jerome Rothenberg, Charles Simic, Gary Soto, William Stafford, Louis Simpson, Arthur Sze, Gerald Vizenor, James Tate, Diane Wakoski.

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
http://www.lisabmusic.com/
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Tod Dickow's solo on "Center of the Rhyme"

2011-01-11T17:42:00.000-08:00

I was really pleased to discover that sax-player Tod Dickow recently put up on his site his beautiful swirling solo from my 2003 tune "Center of the Rhyme." Check it out! http://dickowmusic.com/Music/music.shtml (click on tab 2, Samples from CD Recordings; it's at the top of the list).

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The Doug of Edwards: Standards

2010-11-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

Here's the poem I wrote on request and read at the memorial for Doug Edwards at Kimball's Carnival, Oakland, California, November 21, 2010.

The Doug of Edwards: Standards
© 2010 Lisa Bernstein (Lisa B)

He had found a cadence,
a voice to call listeners to the music
and I like others was invited
to step along with him, to enter the tide
of air across the airwaves, the phone line,
the moment of his onstage introduction
and then listen and sing and play
as the music we made floated out
to the world buoyed
by Doug’s support. He was ready to serve
in the army of The Music,
to push off the boat from the shore, sound a 21-gun salute
and then stand there laughing as we sped out.
And he always made the phone call to welcome us home,
to find out more about the trip of the
tones, the jones to scat the next passage, the new poem.

Doug’s was the stubbornness
of a gentleman. He would do you the kindness
of stating when standards were not met, gently if he cared about you,
forcefully if he simply knew you,
but always with courtesy. Standards mattered,
whether expectations for the show, the sound level,
the songbook, the degree of literacy, the way to act.
Doug loved to stress in his introductions whether one was an educator
and he never stopped educating
us – players, listeners, as an elder in a community
that he helped call into being by being here with us.

He died with his usual good timing.
No surgery, no lengthy stay in the hospitals he hated.
In his vet-hospital bed, what he wanted to talk about
was my new job, my parents’ health, and the next gig.
As he’d said two weeks before on the phone,

“I’m just trying to stay relevant.”
In that long telephone catch-up I’d told him about my despair –
what did it all matter
given the state of the music world and what I did?
“If you’re throwing all that around,” he said,
“I’d like to be part of the conversation.” And listed to me passionately
some of what of value I was. I was just one of those
privileged enough to have him defend me
to myself.

Doug hasn’t yet left us all the way. I can feel him watchful, grinning,
shaking his head at the way he would have done this

just a bit differently, but grateful for and graceful with the show.
It’s we the living who suffer
without his real live voice,
not him who chafes now against his ever-darkening sight,
against the difficulty in near-blindness

of getting to the station or the show,
against not having witty company enough hours of the day.
In death now he is not alone,
he sees and walks even with no dog or human arm to link his through,
he has been awarded all the medals of honor,
he has made peace with the wrong-headed and the rude, hearing only
the strong and mournful trumpet, the exactly swinging brush
on the snare, communing with Shirley Horn and Milt Jackson,
and the first blues singers, and still shaking his head
with a proud and easy smile about what we creators do,
just right enough to keep the human project going.

How often do you know that someone gets you?
Doug’s comprehension of my art was like walking into

an airy lavender building
full of gardenias, where the walls would give
space to work, where the floors became a stage for his audience.
How often does someone know where your art fits into history?
He laughed when I complained of not getting the attention

of this or that singer or songwriter.

“How can you even compare yourself?” he laughed,

his warm voice like velvet scattered with the scratch of emeralds.
“You’re in a whole different category.”
It took being that himself to know.

Doug, it’s me who is bereft beyond consoling now.
I wish I could still walk with you
into the control room and read a PSA for you,
hand you a bio downloaded in 14-point bold,
hear you announce Ear Thyme, Jazz Passages, BAJABA,
the Audible Art Gallery, And that’s the way it jolly well goes,
and the latest plans for an award from the Order of the Flask,
amble into Anna’s or Yoshi’s or the billiards place

where Kimball’s used to be for a taste of cognac and fish & chips,
hear your rare, wistful need and relief

when you told a story about Cindy your partner,
dish the latest about Dee-Dee or Dianne, laugh
at the latest foolishness, shake our heads –
and forgive it, setting the world right
with the articulation of standards.
And then get up and walk again, deliberately,
with you The Doug of Edwards, holding your warm, your cool,
your kind, your certain hand.

If you were here now, I know just what you’d say.
“Let’s not talk about me,” you’d say. “Tell me about you.”

##

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
http://www.lisabmusic.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Painting by Bruni

fellow Women Rock member in 12/1 show to Benefit Blue Bear Music: The Independent, San Francisco

2010-11-29T14:13:00.001-08:00

Blue Bear School of Music in San Francisco is where I got my start as a singer and songwriter years ago, so I'm delighted to help promote a show this Wednesday benefiting the school and co-organized by, and featuring, my fellow Women Rock (http://womenrocksf.wordpress.com/mission) member Bernadette.

The BISS Silver Holiday Ball
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Independent
628 Divisadero Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
415.771.1422 :: theindependentsf.com

The New Up, bernadette, Crackerjack Highway,
M80 Mailbox (featuring members of ALO and Tea Leaf Green)
Jack Frost (Antarctica/Blackcrack NYC) spins b/t sets

A portion of proceeds benefit Blue Bear School of Music
Doors: 7:30pm / Show: 8pm . Ages: 21+
Tickets: $12 adv/$14 door
Advance tickets available on: theindependentsf.com
Buy tickets with no service fees at The Independent Box Office and at the front desk of Blue Bear School of Music (Fort Mason Center - Building D, San Francisco).

Blue Bear School of Music is San Francisco's leading destination for aspiring musicians of all ages
and all skill levels who want to enjoy learning and playing rock, blues, jazz, folk, or pop. A nonprofit organization founded in San Francisco in 1971, Blue Bear is a place where learning and playing popular music is fun and affordable, where people come together who love music, and where each student's unique talents and goals are recognized and supported. Blue Bear's mission is to provide superior quality and affordable popular music education to aspiring musicians of all ages and skill levels within a supportive and encouraging community. For more info, please visit bluebearmusic.org.

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
www.lisabmusic.com

Oakland Tribune article on Emeryville Poet Laureate Appointments

2010-11-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

From Oakland Tribune, October 25, 2010
by Sean Maher
EMERYVILLE -- The city's sculptures and installations will soon be joined by the thoughtful verse of a new town poet.

Janell Moon, a 69-year-old hypnotherapist, was named Emeryville's first poet laureate during last week's City Council meeting, an honor that has her already setting a voracious schedule of plans and aspirations. First on the list, she said, is getting poetry in the hands and from the minds of local students.

"I'd like to work with some of the more introverted children," she said. "And I'd like to bring in a local rap artist to work with some of the extroverts. (The two approaches) make two very different kinds of poetry but they're both very valuable."

Moon finds the metaphors that figure in her poetry come pretty naturally.

After all, she spends her professional life dealing in hypnotherapy and dream analysis, coaxing her patients through the varying levels of consciousness and pulling out the meaning of symbols their minds create.

"My work very much dovetails with poetry," she said. "For example, I might ask someone who's anxious: 'When you wake in morning, what might you think of? Something in your life today or from childhood that would calm you?' Usually when they first wake up they're OK and then a second later they remember all their troubles and then they're anxious."

Their answers, she said, might be that they think of birds in flight, or the bloom and close of morning glories -- an image that conjures a feeling, a foundation of metaphor-based poetry.

In case Moon isn't able to finish her term -- and perhaps to provide a second voice of passion for poetry -- the city named Lisa Bernstein as its alternate poet laureate.

Also known as Lisa B, Bernstein has published two books of poetry, been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, and released four albums as a jazz [note: and soul-hiphop-pop] vocalist.

Bernstein got started as a writer when she was a child; her parents were "artistic folks" and she'd read Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" by the time she was 10.

She lives in Berkeley [note: actually, Oakland] and works in Emeryville, where she is beginning her fourth year as a volunteer running a weekly poetry-writing workshop with second-, third- and fourth-graders at Anna Yates Elementary School.

"You're never too young to be a poet," Bernstein said. "They're loving it, and their teacher is really astonished they're writing so much."

The children recently began learning how to use comparisons, Bernstein said. One young poet began a poem by describing herself as "mad as red glitter," progressing until she was "happy as a garden" by the end of the poem.

Both Moon and Bernstein said they hope to continue working with children and to publish an anthology of local poetry by young authors as part of the laureate program.

Emeryville Mayor Ruth Atkin said she is delighted with the new program, which reinforces and expands the city's already prevalent outdoor art program and its commitment to the arts in general.

The two poets will do a reading together Dec. 17 at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. in Berkeley. For information on the event, go to www.expressionsgallery.org or call 510-644-4930.

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
www.lisabmusic.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Poetry Reading in Monterey, Calif., Tuesday 11/9 at 7 p.m., for the Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium

2010-11-03T18:43:00.001-07:00

Maria Garcia Teutsch

The Monterey Bay Poetry
Consortium Presents:

Lisa B (Bernstein)
&
Maria Garcia Teutsch

Tuesday, November 9, 7:00 p.m.
East Village Coffee Lounge,
498 Washington Street, Monterey
$5.00 Admission

Poet-singer Lisa Bernstein (Lisa B) is the author of The Transparent Body (Wesleyan University Press) and Anorexia (Five Fingers Poetry). Her poems have appeared in 60+ anthologies and periodicals, including The Kenyon Review, Tikkun, Ploughshares, Calyx, Brilliant Corners, Field, City Lights Review, Zyzzyva, Antaeus, and Feminist Studies. She has won creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Puffin Foundation and was just named the alternate Poet Laureate of Emeryville. Lisa B is also a jazz-soul singer-songwriter incorporating poetry into original songs and standards. Her latest CD of four is The Poetry of Groove (2009). Raised in Santa Cruz, she lives in Oakland. See http://www.lisabmusic.com/.

Maria Garcia Teutsch is Editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong magazine. She also serves as president of the board of directors of the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, Ca. She is widely published, and has three poetry chapbooks, Surrender Dorothy, Fractured Fortunes, and there are no cars on this highway. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Hartnell College. She is an MFA candidate at New England College.

Upcoming Events:
Dec. 14---Diana Garcia and Jim Powell

For more information, please contact John Laue:

(831) 684-0854
Cosponsored by the Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium, Poetry Slow Down on KXRA540,
The National Writers Union, Chapter 7, http://nwu7.org/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2010-10-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

I was just appointed alternate Poet Laureate of Emeryville in a two-year term, the maiden voyage for this position! Janell Moon, the new Poet Laureate, and I will be reading with one of the judges, Joyce Jenkins, at Expressions Gallery in Berkeley, 12/17/10.

Almost all roads seem to lead to Emeryville lately: I recently became an editor/writer for an Emeryville environmental engineering firm and have just begun my fourth year of teaching poetry-writing in the city's public elementary school, Anna Yates.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
www.lisabmusic.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2010-10-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

Kumar lived in the flat beneath mine – in what I called Bernal Depths (just off Mission Street, in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights) – in the mid-1980s. He was a skinny, smart, sweet, energetic guy in career and personal transition who had about him an air of mystery. We talked sometimes on our shared porch steps and went out to dinner once, but both of us were so busy that our mutual regard and affection never blossomed into a deeper friendship. His presence was both enshadowed and supportive in those months. I had just begun singing, was finding my footing with managing my diabetes, and was immersed in various turbulent and exciting romances, and Kumar could be relied on to smile widely and warmly and to share insights about life whenever our paths crossed, while still pulling an invisible curtain around his activities. Not long after, he moved without leaving much of a trace.

More than 20 years later, Kumar found me online and we began a sporadic correspondence. Then, in late summer 2009, he asked me to work with him – first as a clairvoyant reader and healer, then as a writing coach. I discovered quickly that the warm and sparking spirit I had glimpsed in the ’80s had endured some harrowing suffering before, during, and after that time. Yet he also had since learned a great deal about the contours of his body and soul, gained success in his career, and created a satisfying marriage. I was thrilled to be in touch again, relishing his agile mind, sweet heart, and questing spirit. And I was pleased by the great deal of talent I saw in his writing – a brand-new pursuit, and gift to himself, after years of relentless effort in the high-tech industry.

Beyond our work together, our delayed friendship found its footing. Kumar introduced me to his wife Jenifer via a lovely dinner South of Market. I confided in him on the phone about yet another dramatic romantic episode of mine, reminiscent of what I’d gone through more than two decades ago. He revealed that he was trying out a new medicine to help manage depression, but that his doctors feared it could cause a seizure because of some other physiological conditions he was managing, so he couldn’t drive himself anywhere for a month. Then he was given the all-clear. We had plans to hang out in a coffee shop after Thanksgiving. “You’d really like to do that?” he asked, with the guilelessness of a kid.

Then there was a silence of a few weeks between us. Too silent and too long. Kumar was gone. A seizure had caused his death.

I was robbed of the friendship that we were finally to have.

And yet now I have a gorgeous book: Kumar: A Love Story – stories and poems by Jeyakumar Shanmugam along with paintings and an introductory memoir by Jenifer Bacon, his widow and a longtime accomplished artist. Bacon also designed the book with unusual flair.

Bacon’s introduction reveals the intimacies and rewards of her challenging relationship with Kumar through evocative prose as well as journal and email excerpts. Kumar’s stories, augmented by a few poems, portray a childhood marred by vicious abuse from his father; wartime experience with Americans that’s both amusing and touching; the sometimes hilarious perspective of an adult newcomer to the U.S.; and the internal life of a suburban worker grappling with drug use, rage, and recurring painful memories – all of it conveyed with a well-constructed grit and accuracy that strikes at the reader’s heart. Bacon’s paintings dynamically illustrate a journey to “put some visual form to what it might be like after we die,” subject matter with which she had been “struggling for some time, long before Kumar died...imaginative landscapes of what we cannot see or even feel completely. This great mystery that someday all of us will experience."

Get the book from blurb.com at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1558143

~~~~~~

http://www.lisabmusic.com/

Autumn Vibration

2010-09-04T17:05:00.001-07:00

Resetting my vibration at that clear autumn thing: we catch sight of the bridge to darker days yet still turn in the heat and light...

copyright 2010 Lisa Bernstein

www.itunes.com/lisab
www.lisabmusic.com

------------------------------------

New comic website: Commuters' Corner

2010-08-30T21:34:00.001-07:00

Check out the new online comic strip Commuter's Corner, founded by my good friend Tim, on the joys, horrors, and humor of commuting. New episodes weekly, automotive tips, and lots of room for your comments and strip ratings. http://www.ccstrip.com/ "Will drive you to laugh."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
www.lisabmusic.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Best performance of my life on Father's Day this year

2010-06-28T14:02:00.001-07:00

Now and then, all the years of practicing and singing and performing come together and I feel totally in control and in the flow -- cracking jokes, singing well, telling the story, exerting magic, riding the cushion and the waves and the accents of the band, dancing, and knowing that the audience got it! (Plus, they told me.)

That's how it felt 6/20/10 in the house concert with Jennifer Lee (who was delightful to share the bill with) in Oakland.

And it helped immensely that the sound system/acoustics were excellent.

I appreciate these moments after a number of gigs marred by imperfect sound or a performance that wasn't up to my own exacting standards. This one: I know that we all did the best we could, and it was remarkable and joyful.

I am grateful.

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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My dance program represents at 2010 S.F. Gay Pride March

2010-06-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is the ODC School Rhythm and Motion contingent at San Francisco's Gay Pride March yesterday. Represent! I've done this routine many times, but never while traversing Market Street so quickly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ9g0u8FiJo

House Concert Sun. 6/20 3 p.m. with Jennifer Lee!

2010-06-12T17:48:00.001-07:00

Jazz, Nujazz, & Spoken Word
Lisa B (vocalist/poet) & Jennifer Lee (vocalist/guitarist)

Sunday, June 20
3 p.m.
Avonova - www.avonovamusic.com

417 Avon St., Oakland, Calif, 94618
(nr. 51st & Broadway)

with Ben Flint, piano
Jeremy Cohen, electric bass
Raul Ramirez, drums & percussion
$14-20 sliding scale, $7-10 kids (checks to artists or cash only)
Free light refreshments

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm thrilled to be joining forces with the very cool and very warm straightahead jazz singer/guitarist Jennifer Lee on this double bill! It's a house concert at an intimate Rockridge/Temescal venue with great sound, refreshments, and space to wander a bit outdoors.

If you're celebrating Dad's Day, do it with us -- let us know and we will gladly dedicate a song to you or your father!

All welcome to enjoy this relaxing, grooving Sunday afternoon with us in sunny, safe Oakland. (Musicians, come check out this great venue.) http://www.avonovamusic.com/

http://www.jennifer-lee.net/ - check her out!
http://www.lisabmusic.com/
www.itunes.com/lisab - to download a tune for you or yours...

Performing at Mamapolooza Festival and Conference/Bowery Poetry Club, NYC - Fri. May 21

2010-05-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

Glad about the invitation to perform in this event, and to participate in NYC's Mamapalooza Festival and Conference!

Friday May 21

Spoken word, poetry and prose performances

8-10 p.m.

Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery New York, NY 10012-2802

(212) 614-0505 $10 + 2 Drink Minimum

near Broadway-Lafayette St. subway station

Hosts: Alana Ruben Free & Marjorie Tesser

8:00 Skye, Soul Poet

8:05 Mary Kate Azucay

8:10 Theta Pavis

8:15 Pandora Scooter

8:45 Lori Diamond

9:10 Candice Anitra

9:20 Jes Wright
9:30 Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein)

See http://www.motherhoodmuseum.org/Bowery.html for more information

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This event is part of:

AMPLIFYING THE VOICES OF (M)OTHERS 2010
Mothers in the Arts, Literature, Media and Popular Culture
Academic, Artistic, Cultural and Socially Relevant Presentations Welcome
May 20-22, 2010, Nola Studios and Assorted Venues, New York City
(and other New York Locations)
250 (244) W.54th St. (Between Broadway and 8th)
$25 daytime attendance (per day)
$10 per session attendance
REGISTER ONSITE
Welcome All!
Conference Introduction: Dr. Gina Wong
Keynote Speakers: Dr. Phyllis Chesler
Jill Brooke, Huffington Post

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interview w/ Joy Rose, Media Mom, on NYTalkRadio.net

2010-05-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

Great interview w/ Joy Rose, Media Mom, just posted on NYTalkRadio.net. Fun conversation with this smart, supportive NY feminist, played 3 songs, and even read an unearthed poem, "Two Nudes," in the run-up to the Mamapalooza Festival gig Fri. 5/21 at the Bowery Poetry Club, NY.

Click on "Listen to the New Podcast." Episode 38. http://www.mediamom.com/Radio.html

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www.itunes.com/lisab

www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

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Fun workshop with San Francisco kids

2010-04-27T17:09:00.000-07:00

I was delighted to work with the kids earlier this month in singer Carmen Milagro's Peanut Butter and JAMM Music Sessions, at the after-school program directed by Lisa Baty in Mercy Housing, south of Market, San Francisco.

We two Lisa B's are the grownups in the photo (I'm on the left).

You can see that the kids – not to mention Lisa Baty – feel happy and expressive after their poetry writing and performance session!

Thanks, Carmen, Lisa, and young poets!

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein

www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

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Poetry Extravaganza to Benefit Haiti/Chile

2010-03-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Please come to -- and/or tell your Bay Area friends about -- this astonishing and rare line-up of poets and performers. Your contribution will help Haiti and Chile recover from their recent earthquakes.

I'm honored to participate!

MUCHAS VOCES / UNA VISIÓN • MANY VOICES / ONE VISION
Collective Poetry Reading by More than 35 Bay Area Poets

A Benefit for the Relief Efforts in Haiti
by Doctors Without Borders / Médicins Sans Frontieres

Also Dedicated to the Victims of Chile's February 27 Earthquake -- And Celebrating César Chávez Day!

Sunday March 28, 2010
7 - 10 p.m.
La Peña
3105 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley, CA 94705
(510) 849-2568
$10 suggested donation - No one turned away for lack of funds
www.lapena.org

Guest Poet:Diane di Prima, San Francisco Poet Laureate

and reading/performing for only 5 minutes each!

Adrián Arias • Alejandro Murguía • Al Young • Boadiba • Carlos Barón • Daniel del Solar • Devorah Major • Dorinda Moreno • Evelie Delfino • Fernando Torres • Francisco X. Alarcón • Francisco Letelier • Genny Lim • Geri Digiornio • Graciela Ramírez • Jack & Adelle Foley • Jack Hirschman • Jennifer Andrea Porras • Jennifer Fox Bennett • Jewelle Gomez • JoAnn Anglin • Joyce Jenkins • Katherine Hastings • La Tigresa (Donna Nieto) • Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) • Lorna Dee Cervantes • Lucha Corpi • Mamacoatl • Marc Piñate • Mary Rudge • Nicole Limón • Nina Serrano • Nellie Wong • Odilia Galván Rodríguez • Paul Lobo Portugues • Rafael Jesús González • Roberto Vargas • Rosa Escamilla • Samuel Iñiguez • Sharon Doubiago

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

"I heard a Fly buzz -- "

2010-03-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

Taught my 4th-grade poets Emily Dickinson's great poem

"I heard a Fly buzz – When I died

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air –

Between the Heaves of Storm – ..."

They thought it was weird & unsettling. Right! They were more inspired than I'd ever seen them after we wrote a poem together on the board and then wrote in pairs. It's starting to happen. Better to begin in 2nd grade, tho'.

;-)

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"My Ship"

2010-02-27T18:34:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago the poet Garrett Hongo commented on Facebook that he was listening to "Miles Ahead + 19" and that his favorite song was "My Ship" by Gershwin/Kurt Weill.

Some of the lyrics go like this:

"My ship has sails that are made of silk / The decks are trimmed with gold / And of jam and spice / There's a paradise in the hold // My ship's aglow with a million pearls / And rubies fill each bin / The sun sits high in a sapphire sky / When my ship comes in..." (I like that the paradise in the hold consists of jam and spice!)

I love the song and loved that he was writing about it (although actually, I don't think he was was focusing on the lyrics but on Miles' instrumental version). I had to comment:

"Heard that around the house a lot growing up plus my Mom's out-of-tune a cappella singing of it. Hence had to learn it once I became a singer.

"I felt it was really about singing (= lyric = poetry)!

'I do not care if that day arrives / That dream need never be / If the ship I sing / Doesn't also bring...'

I don't think it's just a scanning problem that led to not saying 'the ship I sing OF' but instead 'the ship I sing' -- I prefer to think that one is really singing that ship into being."

Despite her utter untunefulness, my Mom sang its first couple of lines with heart and just the right mix of fervor and wistfulness -- and then stopped, implying the rest with her bright-eyed expression.

Gotta remember to sing that ship into being -- the only way it's going to get here.

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Lisa B's 3-Dot Journalism for February

2010-02-08T15:26:00.001-08:00

Dear Friends,

Bucking the trend of producing a beautifully designed, relentlessly self-focused newsletter, I decided to send out something including the cool happenings of some other creative folks in my immediate universe…(and I always loved those Herb Caen columns)…

Jamie Fraser, the hip-hop dancer in my recent music video for “The Poetry of Groove” (let’s face it, my only music video) will be competing on MTV’s “America’s Best Dance Crew” this Thursday Feb. 11 at 10 p.m. with his crew BreakEFX. Watch -- and text or phone the show -- to vote for them. A sweeter dancer-teacher cannot be found.

…And does anyone want to invite me over to see the show? As some of you know, I don’t subscribe to TV shows, not only to save the expense (forget the antenna idea, it’s completely beyond my skill set and would pick up only a few stations), but also to allow time to watch the uncountable number of DVDs supplied by my beloved father…

Speaking of which, I was happy to recently share some of these DVDs on jazz and Latin music with my good friend and very first music mentor since I became a grownup, the Latin jazz wonder Wayne Wallace, to show in some of his classes this semester. Wayne has produced a dizzying number of CDs recently, well worth checking out.

…About that same music video: Its L.A. director/cinematographer Royce Dudley also recently shot a wildly different piece called “Mind of the Demon: The Larry Linkogle Story” – which just won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The film also was awarded Best Documentary at the Bel Air Film Festival. It explores the psyche of the dirt-bike legend who helped kick-start the freestyle motocross revolution, then battled problems with drugs and violence. I must say I’ve known folks who faced the latter, but who knew there was a motocross revolution?

…I was thrilled to have two very different kinds of interviews in the past couple of months, one by MSN Messenger – which method allowed both spontaneity and increased written eloquence – and the other by phone (for an online radio show) – which allowed my and the interviewer’s mutual female enthusiasm to bubble up complete with vocal nuance. The first, with the delightful writer Jordan Richardson, he titled “Lisa B on Assertive Women, Poetry and Monk’s Genius” and is at http://blogcritics.org/music/article/interview-lisa-b-on-assertive-women/ . The second, with the vivacious and talented singer Carmen Milagro, can be downloaded or streamed at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/carmen-milagro . Both are very off the cuff, not that I have cuffs.

Francisco Alarcon kindly invited me to participate in a reading to benefit Doctors without Borders’ Haiti relief efforts. It’s at La Pena in Berkeley on March 28, 7 – 10 p.m. An extravaganza of more than 30 poets reading for 5 minutes each, including Al Young, Diane DiPrima, and many others. I’m hoping to perform to one of the instrumental tracks from my recent “The Poetry of Groove” CD to add a shot of poetic spoken-sung experience to the proceedings. Francisco and I were published together in “Red Dirt”’s inaugural issue of 1991, edited by Lorna Dee Cervantes…

…I enjoyed catching my friend Daria and Roberta Donnay, the two Lickettes for Dan Hicks’ recent show at Oakland Yoshi’s – not least because they were so funny, especially Daria. I didn’t expect that from her other performances. It’s a real talent to be a momentarily goofy comedienne who also sings so richly and hiply…

Also unexpected was the January 28 review of my new CD by Mark Saleski, in which he likens me to “non-standard” female vocalists Bjork, Kate Bush, and Meredith Monk but contrasts me with them because I lack any “perceived strangeness of presentation.” (He hasn’t seen me in the morning.) He describes the record as “spoken word beautifully sung excursions…in a bunch of snazzy grooves that vary from hip-hop to slinky jazzification” and calls it spiritually uplifting, evocative, hopeful, funny, and sexy.

…I’m back since October at Emeryville’s Anna Yates Elementary School teaching poetry-writing as a weekly volunteer, having graduated from my 2nd- and then 3rd-graders (I taught the same group for two years) to start anew with a rambunctious and sweet 4th-grade class...

One of the then-3rd-graders, whom I’ll call Star, wrote a thank-you at the end of the last school year that I only recently received. It’s one of my favorite responses ever. I was struck by her ability to look outside her own experience to insightfully portray and evaluate a grown-up: “I like the way U…/Use your colors./Always have Energy./Present your self,/And what you stand for./Out of know where come up with a rhyme.” The kids did work with color in their poem-writing, but I feel she also saw my use of color vibrations as a clairvoyant reader (which she knew nothing about) and my focus on “energy.” And I really like the spelling of “know where.”

...If you're a musician/songwriter and would like to collaborate, please get in touch and let's explore...

For your valentine or yourself, you might want to give “The Poetry of Groove” or the very pink and amorous “What’s New, Pussycat?” Aptly, the 2-for-1 holiday sale is still in force (get a free CD for buying one via PayPal). Delivery is rapid, and you will be hugely appreciated not only by the recipient but by me (demonstrated by a kiss if you want it or whatever inscription you specify). Links to retailers are at http://www.lisabmusic.com/cds_books.html

So out of "know where," I wish you a love-filled and rambunctious February. Thanks, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein)

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein

www.itunes.com/lisab

www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

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"Lisa B on Assertive Women, Poetry and Monk's Genius"

2010-02-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

I also had the honor and fun of a long interview, before the turn of the year, with Jordan Richardson of both Blogcritics.com and Canadian Audophile's Reviews and News. Check it out at http://blogcritics.org/music/article/interview-lisa-b-on-assertive-women/.

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Free-wheeling radio interview yesterday, can download!

2010-02-06T17:29:00.001-08:00

Really enjoyed this free-wheeling interview yesterday with the vivacious Carmen Milagro on how I became a poet and singer, using social media, coaching kids, advice to musicians seeking gigs (i.e., advice to self), making a living, using different sides of the brain, the biggest risk I ever took, and more. Stream or download from link.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Carmen-Milagro

!!!!!!

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Nice to be compared to Bjork and Kate Bush

2010-01-30T16:23:00.000-08:00

Mark Saleski's new review! I really enjoyed being likened to "nonstandard" singers like Bjork and Kate Bush but contrasted with them because of not seeming initially strange or inaccessible.

Plus he calls the CD sexy, funny, spiritually uplifting, evocative and more: "On 'The Poetry Of Groove,' Lisa B takes her spoken word beautifully sung excursions and wraps them up in a bunch of snazzy grooves that vary from hip-hop to slinky jazzification."

Check it out! http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-lisa-b-the-poetry/

It's so good to have someone (else) get the record and describe it so articulately and entertainingly! I'm thankful.

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Feeling Well, Creating Gigs, Reaching Out to Collaborators

2010-01-16T16:59:00.000-08:00

It feels so good to be feeling healthy, singing well, and getting into the groove of practicing again!

It's such a healing and energizing process to get those literal vibrations going throughout the face, mouth, and throat.

AND great fun to be telling a story and expressing emotion at the same time.

Also am very happy to be reaching out to venues about gigs for '10-11!

I'm in the mood to start a collaboration with a musician and possibly other artists. Please reach out if when reading this, you feel a chord -- or a cord -- being struck!

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Winter Solstice

2009-12-21T20:41:00.000-08:00

Today is the Winter Solstice, the year's shortest day. A magic day that's the foundation of all winter holidays.

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"I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after."

And

"When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles."

--From Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

Enjoy your many magic circles.

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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56 Radio Stations and more playing “The Poetry of Groove”

2009-12-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

The nationwide-and-beyond radio campaign that I started in late October, plus activity in late summer, yielded play on 56 noncommercial land-based stations, mainly in the U.S., but also including Canada, Australia, and Spain! Plus 9 internet-only stations have given it play.

And I know there are more out there who are playing it that we don't know about.

Most of these report to the trades, and a number of them have charted it or given it significant play.

In in the past couple of weeks, stations added it in Minneapolis, Teaneck NJ (which broadcasts in NYC too), Amherst MA, Ottawa (in Canada, of course), Eugene and Portland OR, and Lafayette LA, and elsewhere – just to give you a flavor.

If you want the list, go to http://bit.ly/6nk6aH

Thanks, DJs, program directors, and listeners! xoxoxo

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Focus on new CD’s spiritual content in Amazon review by blogger/journalist Michael E. Ross

2009-12-13T15:54:00.000-08:00

I was grateful to be reviewed by blogger/journalist Michael E. Ross on Amazon, and especially pleased by the fact that he focused on the CD's spiritual content:

“On ‘The Poetry of Groove,’… Lisa's signature alto, by turns smoky and lapidary, awakens us to her spiritual travels with infectious rhythms and witticisms that are seductively inviting…

She brings a refreshingly maverick cadence to the spoken-word experience...

In ‘The Poetry of Groove’ and ‘Get the Signal,’ Lisa explores the record's central themes: a call to spiritualism and more reliance on our deeper, more humanistic inclinations. But this ain't no lecture: Lisa brings the musical passion behind her spiritual manifesto… with her love of jazz, Latin rhythm and hip-hop's lyric sensibilities...

The remix of ‘Virtual Kiss’ [has]… nothing missing in terms of its nervous, thoroughly modern dissonance. Hearing it today, more than 10 years after the first version, Lisa's lyrics ring eerily prophetic; this clever take on the persistence of technology and how the ways of the heart struggle to rise in a digital, cubicled world has more pertinence now than it did a dozen years ago.

Lisa's inclusion of a remastered version of ‘Night and Day’ (from ‘What's New, Pussycat?’) may be the best distillation of where she's at as a singer and, more basically, as an evolving artist. This combination of a faithful vocal reading of the Cole Porter classic with her own feline-inspired poetic interpolation remains a reminder of what makes her so fiercely original.

…the jazzy-chill edit of the title track, which closes the album…[w]ith its lush string accents and a deft balance of vocal and instrumental prowess… shapes up as the perfect closing statement… on an album that capably and joyously brings the talents of a true musical iconoclast front and center again.”

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Onward

2009-12-06T18:43:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty much over my irrational disappointment that I didn't leap from the Grammy Nominating Ballot to being one of the final rap (song, album, performance) nominees, who are all major-label million-sellers. But as my pal pointed out, I'm in good company with Queen Latifah! I still keep creating...

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Great new reviews!

2009-12-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

Really happy about the new reviews that have come in! Here are excerpts:

Chris Spector, Midwest Record:

Three years ago, B established herself as our fave Catwoman since Julie Newmar and now we find her moving back to her writer self and bringing her poetry slam side to the fore. Much more Jill Scott than Rod McKuen, B continues to ride the progressive tip with a creative abandon that makes it seem easy to break convention and get away with it. As sexy as you can sound without being a ...70s diva."

http://midwestrecord.com/MWR123.html

I Hear Sparks column by Jordan Richardson, blogcritics.com, December 2, 2009:

Funky, fresh and sexy as all hell, Lisa B’s The Poetry of Groove is an impressive collection of remixes and new pieces… seamless blending of jazz, hip-hop, soul, spoken word and popular music. Her approach to her craft is invigorating… an artist excited to take risks and make moves that other artists might stray from....it’s a mischievous and blistering compilation of work that forms the perfect vibe to warm up a cold winter’s night.

"Lisa B’s command of lyricism is manifest with each piece… [She] paints pictures… to tell entire stories.

"The title track… 'Jazzy Chill Mix' starts the record off with polished beats and Lisa B’s spoken word vocals. She’s alluring, venturing through various tones and moods throughout the course of the song… while the 'House Mix' packs in a danceable beat.

" 'Be Electric (Electronica Remix)' is a sophisticated, sleek cut that makes great use out of Lisa’s hushed, breathy tones and funky witticisms. The remastered 'Trane’s Ride (Naima)' is my favourite song on the record. It uses Coltrane’s piece to underline Lisa’s deeply seductive lyrics… [On} 'Get the Signal' and 'Virtual Kiss'...she shows off her jazz pipes, gracefully dancing through various tones and moods with delight and style...

The Poetry of Groove is a sexy and exciting collection of tunes from one of the most daring and deft performers I’ve come across in a while."

http://blogcritics.org/music/article/i-hear-sparks-lisa-b-the/

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Radio Play on 49 stations!

2009-11-30T20:19:00.000-08:00

Appreciating Twin Vision Radio Promotion for their help on my national noncommercial radio campaign starting late October for "The Poetry of Groove." (Building on initial work in summer.)

49 stations in 25 states are playing it, plus Australia, Canada, and elsewhere.

Getting some CMJ Top 20 and CMJ Jazz charting. It's fun with this CD to hit so many genres, from jazz to Triple A to hip-hop to RPM (dance and remixes) and more.

Has this led to sales? Don't know yet, because iTunes reporting to CDBaby lags...cross fingers. It's a crazy game we're playing, but as passionate artists we play it anyway, no?

Go to http://www.lisabmusic.com/radio.html for the list of stations if you're interested.

And, of course, let those fingers dance and download a track so you can possess this music for your very own self. http://www.lisabmusic.com/cds_books.html

Happy holiday shopping, where in the darkest month we promote light!

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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for National Diabetes Month: Still Savoring the Peach (and Even the Peach Pie)

2009-11-24T12:36:00.001-08:00

Self magazine asked for a piece a few months back about my diabetes and how it relates to my intuitive healing work and my singing – in about 500 words. The editor loved it, 100% committed to run it in the October issue, and gave me the go-ahead to announce the publication on Facebook, etc. Then, she claimed, the publisher cut it before the mag went to press because of reduced ads and fewer pages, and she's shown no interest in running it since, while never giving a firm "no." All this is hard to understand. But I didn't want the piece, written in Self's rather breezy style, to go to waste.

Diabetes has been a great teacher as well as a challenge and offers much more to write about. Here's a start.

Still Savoring the Peach (and Even the Peach Pie)

I thought constant exhaustion and hunger was just the price of being an adult. After worrying throughout high school about my weight, it was a relief to eat twice as much as my 6-foot-2, 200-pound boyfriend and get even thinner. I didn’t pay much attention to my persistent thirst and need to pee.

But after four bouts of the flu in four months, I went to the doctor. My blood sugar was 492 milligrams/deciliter, about five times normal. I had type 1, or “juvenile,” diabetes. My body had mysteriously destroyed its ability to make insulin, which I would have to inject for the rest of my life.

I wept. I talked with family and friends. Suddenly, I had to deal with monitoring blood sugar, self-injection, eating the right proportions. But I figured you could have worse diseases. Research showed that normal blood-sugar levels help avoid diabetes’ terrifying complications (blindness, kidney failure, cardiovascular problems, infections), and normal blood sugar is within reach – with a great medical team, good nutritionist, effective technology, and endless adjustments.

I felt a strange thrill at the ritual pricking of my fingers. It was a gift to glimpse my mortality daily and yet have tools to stave it off. As I wrote in a poem, I was “grateful to have seen this particular death/and to walk away. I forgive us/this defect, the first defection/to the dissolving silence/trailing me like a cloak.” I became a healthy diabetic.

Diabetes quickly taught me that I was both a self (or spirit) and a body, and the spirit part had to take charge of this delicious, important body. This proved true especially during low-blood-sugar episodes, which caused shakiness, crying, and one frightening blackout.

My new awareness about being spirit/body led me to two gifts. The first was enrolling in a well-respected northern California psychic institute, where I learned to do clairvoyant readings and healings. I liked the place not only because of the accurate readings I’d gotten, but because of its basic axioms: find some amusement, get out of effort, and never compromise your certainty. It’s hard to do psychic readings when you’re tense and serious. And being psychic was not about bowing to a guru’s wisdom: it was about learning with skilled teachers to look for yourself at auras, chakras, and what I call “the movie” of the readee, all while releasing matching energetic blocks. It was, and is, fascinating and satisfying to see and heal others and myself.

The psychic work emboldened me to reach for the second gift: singing. I had already begun writing poetry, but singing was a secret desire that seemed scary and hard. Yet those basic psychic axioms gave me the bravery to start my first vocal class, and another healing, exciting journey.

To keep doing anything well, you need good technique. This means admitting that the body is variable and you are imperfect. Every day is different. Every moment throws you new challenges. But what a relief – you adjust! You stock toolboxes – whether a diabetic toolbox (glucose for lows, insulin for highs, diet, exercise), singing toolbox (relax the throat, do that “meow” exercise, really say the lyrics), or psychic toolbox (imagine a tree trunk grounding you to the planet).

On my new CD, “The Poetry of Groove,” I sing about the joys of the body, and the joy of finding your very own truth through this body, in the moment, day after day. One song is about longing for, and tasting, a peach (and so much more). Another sings, “you can move through what’s broken to what’s you” to “find the flow, the poetry of groove.” Listen, sing along, dance.

After 20-plus years, I’m sick of injecting insulin. And I’m frustrated when the day’s first notes sound scratchy. But so what? I know I can change my sound – and keep unfolding my life.

copyright © 2009 Lisa Bernstein

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www.itunes.com/lisab

www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Mastick’s Mysterious, Vital Collages

2009-11-12T20:08:00.001-08:00

Trundled to downtown Berkeley, Calif., to the art show featuring library employees that closed in early November. What a treat to see Nick Mastick’s collages amid the stacks and computer carrels! In this brightly lit atmosphere, Mastick’s dark yet welcoming pieces shimmered as if from out of time, from the time of the unconscious and its newly mapped geographies. I had seen some of the images online, but in person they resonated with much more depth and presence.

“Anatomy and the Spider’s Web” conveys a vivid vitality and a sense of cosmological connection, with its images of anatomical cutaways, spermatozoa, outer space, spiderwebs, and masks. The smaller “Follow Your Gleam” shows a small shelf of books, knicknacks, dolls, sculpture, and a lurking cat, managing to communicate a sense of booklove with a surrealist inflection, conjuring both homeyness and modernist mystery.

Mastick has been making collages for more than 20 years, and he’s due for a show in a real gallery. Looking for an album cover? Think about commissioning one from Mastick or using one of his pieces. Contact me if you’d like to reach him.

© 2009 Lisa Bernstein

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein

www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

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New music video: "The Poetry of Groove"!

2009-10-25T21:08:00.001-07:00

This is cutting off some of the rightward frame: go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owXjQh9L68g for the full-screen version.

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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First Charting for "The Poetry of Groove"

2009-10-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

Just found out that "The Poetry of Groove" has been on KVMR's Top 10 CMJ Jazz Chart for the past 3 weeks! This is a great station in Nevada City. Tomorrow we're launching a broader radio campaign, to noncommercial & college radio across the country and beyond, with the help of Twin Vision promotion, who also worked my first CD 10 years ago.

Thank you, KVMR folks!

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Lisa B on Grammy Nominating Ballot in 3 Rap Categories - NARAS members mail ballots by 10/2

2009-09-29T23:57:00.000-07:00

I'm overjoyed that my new CD and title track "The Poetry of Groove," coproduced and cowriitten with James (Jim) Gardiner of Oakland's Pajama Studios, is on the 52nd Grammy Awards Nominating Ballot for Best Rap Solo Performance, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap Album. I'm honored to be joined by Queen Latifah, Mos Def, and many other exciting artists in this genre.

If you're a NARAS member (or if you're not!), please check it out at free Napster http://free.napster.com/view/artist/index.html?id=12247113 or my website http://www.lisabmusic.com/cds_books.html. Or write me and I'll send you the mp3!

If you don't usually vote in the Rap field -- if you usually hang in the R&B or Jazz or World or Alternative category -- this is your chance to wander over to Rap and cast your vote for something creative that draws from those genres. This jazzy hip-hop CD has reminded listeners of such diverse artists as Gil Scott-Heron, Sade, Bob Dylan, Ani Difranco, Grace Slick, Jill Scott, John Coltrane (one tune is based on "Naima"), and Eric B & Rakim. I'm not kidding! I was a poet first, then a singer who released 3 CDs in the jazz and jazz-soul vein, but in "The Poetry of Groove" I feel I've found a unified sound that melds both poetry and the groove in a unique and memorable way. It's joyful and rich, playful and deep -- or at least I hope you find it that way.

Ballots are due in L.A. (NOT postmarked) Oct. 9, so please mail early. Thanks for your support, and for helping achieve the further small miracle of making me one of the five actual nominees in one of these categories!
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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Neo-Soul Singing class by Ben Flint starts 9/26

2009-09-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

Check out this class taught by one of my fave keyboardists/singers, Ben Flint: Neo-Soul Singing - A class for singers interested in learning Neo-Soul, e.g., Erykah Badu, Musiq Soulchild. Students learn lead vocal and background parts. Class concludes with an end-of-quarter performance. Instructor toured for 19 years with soul superstar Isaac Hayes. Maximum enrollment: 8. Prerequisites: ability to sing/harmonize. Saturdays starting 9/26, 3:15 – 4:45 pm (10 weeks) $365 http://www.jazzschool.com/

(Ben is a cornerstone of my current trio and collaborator on my 2006 CD "What's New, Pussycat?" He and the band will be appearing with me at Anna's Jazz Island in downtown Berkeley, Calif., Friday 11/6.)

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www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.itunes.com/lisab
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Isley Meets Bacharach

2009-09-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

Reveling in the memory of Ronald Isley singing Burt Bacharach on a great CD I re-heard recently, "Here I Am." One of the most moving vocal records in existence. If maple syrup had a heart and sang rich and sweet. With impeccable control. Every word an authentic expression.

Who knew there was so much heartache and depth in Isley, not to mention Bacharach/David? With Bacharach's gorgeous orchestra & arrangements (& piano). Get it!

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein

www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

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11/6/09 Lisa B & Her Poetic Groove Trio at Anna's Jazz Island, Berkeley (and thanks for last Saturday at Armando's)

2009-08-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the audience and the wonderful folks at Armando's music club in Martinez, Calif., for the great gig -- the best of my life! The top-quality sound man and sound system helped all of us soar. It was great to test the improved vocal chops I'd been working toward for the past year and to discover that they really were accessible on the night of the gig. That meant more tones, resonance, range, dramatic capability, musical flexibility, and joy. And Armando's is a fun, authentic, welcoming, relaxed place to play.

The band killed. Bryan Bowman on drums, Jeremy Cohen on electric bass, and keyboardist Ben Flint at the top of his form, plus chiming in on vocals! Someone in the audience also commented on our "witty banter."

I was glad to hear that performing with a couple of instrumental versions of tracks from my new CD (along with Jeremy, in one case) worked well -- and was even the favorite of some folks in the house!

And we're ready to do it all again (except differently, as ever) at Anna's Jazz Island in downtown Berkeley, Calif., on Friday, November 6, 2009. Mark your calendars!

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www.itunes.com/lisab

www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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New CD out! Aug. 22 gig. And more!

2009-07-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

ONE. The CD is out! "The Poetry of Groove" is now available -- an entire set of playful, poetic rap and sultry choruses over jazzy hip-hop grooves.

It's five tracks of new material in various mixes, and five tracks of remixed and/or remastered spoken-word groove tunes from my previous three CDs.

You can get a physical disk from my website (that means me) at the special sale price of $10.99 -- an offer good for the next 10 days: http://www.lisabmusic.com/cds_books.html

And you can get physical CDs, MP3 albums, and MP3 tracks at iTunes, Amazon, or CDBaby. Pretty links are on my site, unadorned ones at the bottom of this email, for you impetuous ones.

TWO. Free tracks. Some of you helped me a couple of years ago by voting for me in the Downbeat Listeners Poll. I promised you a free MP3 track in return. Write me now and remind me that I should send you one, and whether you prefer a jazzy hip-hop, electronica, or world flavor, or even which one you want, if you know!

THREE: CD release gig! Mark your calendars! I'm performing

Saturday, August 22, 8 - 11 p.m.
$8 each or $15 for 2
The intimate, great-sound-system, friendly place Armando's
707 Marina Vista, Martinez, CA 94553, (925) 228-6985
(over 21 only)

Drive on out, it's only about 1/2 hour from Oakland and very relaxing. With ace trio Ben Flint on keys, Bryan Bowman on drums, and Jeremy Cohen on bass. Come celebrate with us! New material and old favorites.

FOUR: Your help with reviews and gigs. Please go over to the sites below and review the new CD! It really helps. Also, I'm booking lots of events in the Bay Area and beyond. Contact me if you run a reading or performance series/venue. Thanks in advance!

FIVE: The FREE LisaB app (prototype of Band App!) for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I'm excited to be the demo and face of the new Band App! for those i-Things. Perfect for bands and other performers who want to be carried around in your fans' pockets. Go to the contacts page on my site for links to the app and to Netmodular, who makes it, and who would be glad to tailor one for you. http://www.lisabmusic.com/contact.html

SIX: (I love tunes in 6/8!) Follow, befriend, comment. I'm digging the 140-character genre of Twitter for poetic outbursts and prosaic updates. You don't need a cell phone; just read it on the web. And, who knew?, it turns out Facebook really does feel like an electronic village. Finally, I'm blogging on topics such as teaching poetry to my third-graders, a poignant real-life Father's Day soundtrack, Billie vs. Carmen on "Good Morning, Heartache," and tuning up your own vibration. Lend your responses and link me to your own efforts.

SEVEN: (OK, we're going odd-meter): Finally, my go-getter publicist has pushed me way out of the closet as a clairvoyant reader and healer -- not that I hid it, I just didn't blast it to the world. Too late now, thanks to a forthcoming story in a national women's mag! If you're interested in a phone reading/healing, or have questions about it, please get in touch. Happy references available.

Thank you, my darlings! All my best, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein)

Get "The Poetry of Groove" at:

Lisa-land: http://www.lisabmusic.com/cds_books.html

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=317598375&s=143441

CDBaby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lisab4

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Groove-Lisa-B-Bernstein/dp/B002BEXISE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1248759638&sr=1-1

I Rhyme in the Shower

2009-07-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

Just told someone I'm a singer-poet. He replied, Does that mean you rhyme in the shower? ;-)

(Appeals to my Groucho Marxian sensibility.)

(I love how "rhyme" is a verb here rather than a characteristic -- something I do rather than some aspect of me. Now that I think about it, it's fun to wonder what I rhyme with. Actually, my record label name comes out of a nickname someone had for me that rhymes with my first name: Lisa / Piece of.

On a more poetic level, I rhyme with -- orange, ocean, flower, cinnamon, purring, old-style metronome...)

On another note, I'm fighting off a cold and just exhausted myself by taking some online personality tests. How silly! Back to more online prep for CD launch (website, BMI registration, etc.) -- being a performing artist means spending more time online than singing or writing!?

Someone on Facebook just suggested I post some of the online test outcomes. OK: I'm an ENFJ in the Myers-Briggs personality spectrum.

And the kind of guy I like: Tough Guy. (All roads lead back to Dad.)

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein

www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

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Luckily

2009-06-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

I hear Latin percussion in the knocking washing machine, altered chords in the Amtrak whistle, a silent operatic soprano when I say hello to God… in an earlier era, I’d be institutionalized. Luckily, in this one, I'm just a musician and writer.

And I have a mockingbird. I mean, she lives nearby, but I feel possessive about her. She's busy all day long transiting loudly through different bird soundbytes. She invented the soundbyte. She's a Puritan bird, she doesn't take a break. No need for a PA either!

"Bird flying high, You know how I feel." That's the first line of "Feeling Good," the song I'm learning, by Newley/Bricusse. Nice to sing a happy song that's deep. With the refrain, "feeling good." Yes!

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www.itunes.com/lisab

www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Solstice Father's Day - "Tempus Fugit"

2009-06-22T01:55:00.000-07:00

After leaving my jazz fan Dad, listened to brilliant bebop beauty of pianist Bud Powell's “Tempus Fugit” (time flees) on this longest day of the year. Nothing like hearing time in a new way, filled with more notes than we knew it had. But bittersweet to feel its fullness stretch out on the road ahead when waving goodbye one more time to my aging folks.

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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25 Years of Successful Diabetic Care! Deserves a Poem!

2009-06-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

In January was the 25th anniversary of my diagnosis of what used to be called juvenile diabetes, now called Type 1. I'm still healthy!

Diabetes has been a great teacher for me. Here's a poem I wrote a couple of years after the diagnosis. It's published in my book from Wesleyan University Press called The Transparent Body, which you can order from my website http://www.lisabmusic.com/cds_books.html .

For the Wordless Body

Mute

the muscle constricts with thirst.

The scent of citrus in the urine,

sugar leaking

into a film across the eyes.

Morning fills the windowpane,

a lit rectangle to be hungry in. I hurry

past buildings, counting out streets,

a self with words

and a hollowing silence of cells.

Language punctures

the skin.

Slimmer than a pen

the syringe shoots the insulin.

The sweetness of tangerines

lingers in the bloodstream. The injection

combusts it into strength and heat.

Body, christened again

you burn too well, flushed

as an infant and shaking for food.

A frantic mother, I bend to you.

At night I fake the bravado

of a teenage boy pinching

a girl's bare leg,

the needle poised above my thigh.

For years you absorbed what I fed you,

then denied.

Now you try to refuse

the sweet essence that keeps us alive.

So I am vigilant
for the sake of eyesight and limbs,

grateful to have seen this particular death

and to walk away. I forgive us

this defect, the first defection

to the dissolving silence

trailing me like a cloak.

It falls from my shoulders

when my arms rise, awkward

and bare, a child's A

against the light.

“Good Morning, Heartache” with Carmen McRae on Memorial Day

2009-06-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day, and the masculine smell of barbeque wafts through the air. A cool sunny Oakland afternoon on which, as usual, I’m a contrarian – here with only my cat, working.

But I’m satisfied. I had some fun and healing yesterday in Sacramento with a friend who’s known me since our first year of college. The kind of friend who’s seen me up, down, and in between, who knows my parents and who’s seen a husband and boyfriends come and go. Who loves me no matter what. We talked, laughed, almost cried, walked, threw the ball for the dog, hot-tubbed, and then ate barbecued steak, salad, artichokes, and a few cherries with her sweet husband.

Yesterday started out differently. Driving up Highway 80 to Sacramento as a night person barely awake, it took all I had in the bright 11 a.m. sunlight to forge ahead through the green-brown-billboard-filled landscape, holding my own amid the jostling aggressive SUVs.

I was listening to a 1995 Decca reissue of some of Carmen McRae’s songs. She has influenced me tremendously. Dan Morgenstern writes in the liner notes, “No jazz singer has paid more attention to words than Carmen McRae, and she bluntly stated that ‘lyrics are more important than melody to me.’… in a very real sense, she was a singing actress.”

Compounding the morning’s incongruity was Carmen’s 1955 take on “Good Morning, Heartache,” which seemed to resonate the darkness of evening. But as I listened, I realized how fitting it was – it’s about the strangeness of finding the night’s sorrow still there in the morning.

Of course, Billie owns the tune. I haven’t heard her sing it in awhile, but in my mind’s ear Billie’s voice on it is searing, plaintive, her tone as raw as a fresh wound. Carmen is more nuanced. She expresses pain, but she has some distance from it. She takes stock of her situation, she bargains. Even when she pleads, “Stop haunting me now,” her voice, with more bottom than Billie’s, radiates self-possession. Then she gives the slightest of laughs – ironic and intimate – when finally inviting heartache to sit down. Billie is tragic, whereas, as Dan Morgenstern writes, “Unlike Billie, Carmen is not resigned to fate.”

Carmen descended musically from Billie, and she always paid her homage. We descend from each other in music as well as life.

And so as I drove up Highway 80 with the morning holiday road warriors, I was not only taking notes as a singer, I was also comforted as a person, a woman. I thought, so I’m not alone in my incongruous gloom. So heartache does linger for you too, day after day. It’s not a flaw or a sin. Sometimes it’s a condition of life. You too are obsessive, disappointed, unable to forget. Well, we make music out of this, don’t we – and the song is our memorial day.

Oh, and despite Carmen’s assertion about lyrics being more important than melody to her, she ends the song on a gorgeous note – a major 7 against a dominant chord (in which the 7 is flatted by the musicians), it sounds like to me. It has a haunting feel, a dissonance that doesn’t quite align with what the musicians are playing – her very own note, evoking her solitary condition, in the end.

Fittingly, I’m still plowing ahead – plowing through the many tasks related to setting up the release of “The Poetry of Groove” on August 1. In the past week, I’ve made great strides in putting together my promo team for print, radio, gigs, and more (a leading-edge Lisa B iPhone app is even on the horizon!). After months of work on the music and its package, it’s been exciting to talk with some great folks in the music business who dig what I’ve done and have creative, enthusiastic ideas about how to get it out there. (Keyed-up sigh of relief.)

Now it dawns on me that my new title track starts with a spoken lyric of heartache (“I walked down the street,/I was one into two./I split like a faultline, I split into you./My mind closed in/like a girl in the dark/and my legs sliced the sky/while you chewed on my heart”). But it moves through it (“I remembered how to swim/up through the dark water,/rise to the light/where the sun burns hotter…), and finally finds the poetry of my own groove, singing to the listener about how s/he can do the same.

So in my negotiation with heartache, I descend from Billie and Carmen, extending their legacies into modern territory. I’m deeply comforted to know it as I drive ahead. I may be steering the car alone for stretches, but I carry their wisdom beside me in the front seat.

copyright 2009 Lisa Bernstein

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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A Vibration That Matches Your Desire

2009-05-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

“Offer a vibration that matches your desire rather than offering a vibration that matches what is.”

What a great piece of advice, and how deceptively simple!

As a trained energy worker (I like that term – it sound so Marxist) – that is, an intuitive reader and healer – I have a lot of techniques and experience up my sleeve to read what’s going on energetically/spiritually in myself or others; move out unwelcome or hampering influences; and reset my or someone else’s space in a way that’s harmonious and growthful.

But like everyone, I get stuck. So I enjoy the helpful advice from the folks at Abraham-Hicks. Usually I don’t like spiritual advisors who get most of their information from a channelled being. I’m already plenty transcendental, and I want to balance that; I find that my greatest power as a reader, and as a performer, comes from channelling myself instead of some other entity alive or passed on (whether this being is my lovely Mom or some spiritual guide).

But Esther Hicks is an exception: She’s a channeller, but she still seems real and helpful.

Here are some tips from me that build on her phrase quoted above:

You might want to work with the idea of “vibration” as a color. Imagine that a bar at the top of your head is a color you want to be vibrating at, a color that feels good. Notice how you feel. Probably better already!
Experience the vibration of a note or a part of a song you like. Hum it or sing a few words.
Think of one thing you want. How would you feel if you got it? Feel that way now. Just pretend. Now you’re more likely to attract the thing you’re wanting.
What you desire feels good to you. If you feel bad while desiring it, it’s probably not something you really want (maybe someone else told you to want it).

It’s been a tough time for me personally the last few days. Some complicated communications cast a shadow of disappointment, about someone else and about myself, and this shadow in turn dredged up longer shadows from my past. Secrets and betrayal was the theme. And the usual source of these things reared its head: pre-existing (stuck) pain in someone else, and in myself.

So after a lot of crying and thinking – which have their precious place as one moves through difficult events and emotions – and using other energy tools, I’m resetting my own personal space.

Bringing desire back into my space.

Setting a vibration for myself that matches my desire: Certainty, turquoise, forgiveness, a chord I hear in my head right now, joy.

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein

www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein

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2009-04-21T00:09:00.001-07:00

“I Used to Be A Giraffe…”: My Young Poets

2009-04-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of my life over the past year and a half has been teaching poetry-writing to kids in the public elementary school in nearby Emeryville, Calif. After contacting the district’s volunteer coordinators in fall 2007, I was quickly matched with a fabulous teacher eager to have me work with her then-second-graders for an hour every week. Without really knowing what I was doing, I found my way as a teacher thanks to Kenneth Koch’s brilliant book of poetry-writing exercises and advice, “Wishes, Lies, and Dreams,” and thanks to the open, respectful, creative vibe the teacher had already set in the classroom. And most of all, because of the sweet, talented kids – African-American, Hispanic, Filipino, and Indian, most from low-income families – and the rapport we found together. This proved true even with the few kids with sporadically disruptive classroom behavior.

Every week I’d come in and greet them with “Hi, poets!” I assumed they could write. And they matched my assumption by doing so. I soon learned the impact on them of certain things I said. Early on, before we started the writing part of each class, I would instruct them that they could raise their hands if they were “stuck” and I’d come around to help. Shortly I had a batch of kids every week moaning about how stuck they were. Well, they were writers. They could have writer’s block. (And I found ways to nudge them out of it.)

In one session, I read them part of one of my favorite poems, Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Romance Sonambulo” (in English and then partly in Spanish) – “Green I love you green/Green the wind, green the boughs…” The assignment was to use a color in every line. A very shy Mexican-American girl, a bit taller than the other kids, really found her voice in response. Her poem using the color white (blanca) was so poignant and lyrical that it brought tears to my eyes when I read it aloud to the class. (For most of that first year, I read all the kids’ poems to them at the end of every class, as we only had an hour in total, not enough time at this stage for them to read their own poems. They’d gather on the rug up front and listen raptly with sparkling eyes, often laughing, impressed and moved by their creations.)

The next class, I assigned one of the Koch exercises: “I used to be______/but now I am ____.” The kids were to write as many of these couplets as they could during the writing time. Lupita, the girl inspired by Lorca, started with this:

“I used to be a giraffe
but now I am a paragraph.”

What an inventive match of elements, and what an original rhyme! Even more moving was what the lines said about Lupita. She was no longer an isolated animal, looking down from her slight height silently at the rest of the class. She had become something changed. Something rich with meaning, more than just a word or a sentence. She had become a paragraph.

These kids have kept me creating. As I tell them every week: “Thank you, poets. Give yourselves a hand.”

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www.itunes.com/lisab

www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Photo Shoot/Root Canal

2009-03-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

Could this title be an example of a poetry-writing exercise that I have given to my beloved third-grade poets – an exercise on random rhyming, perhaps? Or the name of a vintage “Monty Python” bit?

Not yet. You don’t ever desire one of them, and you sure don’t want both happening at the same time in your life. But for me in February/March, they were.

So, I’d never had a root canal. My possibly incompetent dentist realized that perhaps the persistent pain over 5 weeks of adjustments to a new crown might indicate the need for a root canal. An x-ray confirmed it. Why didn’t the x-ray that pointed to a needed crown show a needed root canal to start with? One can only speculate. So I undergo part one of the RC. Weird, painful, but bearable during and after. Part two of the RC: the dentist manages to drop not one, but two broken-off tips of the cleaning implement (the rotary file) deep IN the canal. I am alarmed; he is mildly apologetic and emphatic about all his effort to “help me.” My later research on the internet shows that this occasionally happens, mentioning one rotary file left in a tooth canal, no big deal, can be sealed in there – but two of them…? Not a mention. The dentist himself admitted he had left one rotary file (some millimeters long) in a patient’s interior jaw before, but never two. One would think that the first loss of the implement – likely to now reside forever in my very slanty tooth canal – would have inspired him to quit the effort then and there and refer me to an endodontist with superior equipment who specializes only in root canals. But no – he seems to be a very determined man, as indicated by the force of his chairside manner, one who doesn’t give up – as if while digging through my tender mouth he were practicing the martial art in which, his staff admiringly told me earlier, he was quite expert. But my rather small mouth is not an aikido mat, nor is the “canal” in this case anything like those in Venice.

So he does refer me to an endodontist, who is no longer enrolled in my rather budget-level (now I see why) dental plan. I find another in the plan who seems to be very well credentialed, and in the better-heeled town of Walnut Creek. (You can see that I’m now desperate for reassurance of any kind about this procedure.) When we meet, I stupidly mention that she’s not listed on “Yelp,” prompting a bit of ruffled ranting about the website on her part. Great start. We get past that. I love her digital x-rays in which you can see the two rotary files deep in the diagonal canal beneath my tooth, lying one upon the other casually like toothpicks at a picnic. She makes a reasonable assessment of the situation, and a few days later she seems to complete a successful root canal in which the two instruments are, I hope, sealed forever in the sterile, filled canal.

While all this is going on, I’m conceiving of and organizing a photo shoot for my upcoming CD, “The Poetry of Groove.” But it’s challenging to imagine how I might want to look on the cover while handling a throbbing tooth and worrying about questionable dental expertise. Still, I call the wonderful photographer I’ve used on my last three CDs, Sibylla Herbrich. We brainstorm together. We talk about the right image, possible “looks,” what it should communicate. We send each other examples of CD covers we like. We decide to do the shoot at her new studio in Santa Rosa, Calif. I contact Artist Untied, an S.F.-based agency of talented hair and makeup artists and more, led by the capable Rene, who has kindly set me up with just the right person, at a generous rate, on each of the last shoots. I’m concerned about finding someone willing to travel to Santa Rosa among his tidy roster of six stylists. Amazingly, one of them, Veronica, has family in Santa Rosa and wants to do it. We settle on a date.

The day after RC #1, I spend 5 hours (on ibuprofen) trudging through the rain in downtown San Francisco looking for something to wear on the shoot. I’m sadly lacking in nice clothes. I have about four different outfits I can wear on gigs or photo shoots, and mostly these have been exhausted by the covers of the last three CDs. We’re talking about a 10-year span here; this should tell you about my interest in clothes shopping. Now I’m looking for something colorful, form-fitting, that reads creativity, poetry, groove. Much of what I try on is too tight – in the large sizes. And I’m under 5’4” and 123 lbs, in great shape. What do the truly large women wear (and may we all love the sizes we are, whatever they may be)? A lot of the clothes are cheap retreads from the 70s. And the rest of it is just wrong. This continues for the next two weeks – root canal procedures 1, 2, and 3, each one more painful than the last as my canal gets more excavated, followed by my determined and increasingly hopeless foraging through stores in various neighborhoods of Berkeley and Oakland, as if the more someone hacks through my mouth, the more frantic I am to cover up with good-looking apparel.

I finally find a couple of things to wear – in black. One piece is way, way, way above my budget. It looks gorgeous. I buy it.

Not having expected the RC experience to drag on, it turns out that I’ve scheduled RC #3 for a Tuesday and the shoot three days later on a Friday. I look a bit worse for wear on Thursday. Should I cancel? I decide that the interior pain doesn’t show much on my face, place my faith in makeup, lighting, and Sibylla, and forge ahead rather than reschedule.

The rain stops. It’s a fresh, lovely drive into the Santa Rosa hills from Oakland. Sibylla is welcoming and efficient as ever, and her new studio quite gorgeous. Sibylla’s husband, the talented photographer and photo-illustrator William Duke, provides brilliant lighting. Veronica is an unassuming though expert delight and does a beautiful job of makeup and hair, and is open to my tweaks. The new clothes look beautiful. Sibylla is masterful and fun to work with. I love the blue background she’s using behind me. In breaks, we check the shots, which these days are digital, and which we can see instantly on the computer – not like the first two CD shoots, when I had to wait days for a real film contact sheet and it was harder to assess what worked and what didn’t, and easier to see on her computer than during the 2006 shoot in my living room for “What’s New, Pussycat?.” Because of this past experience, I’m not alarmed by the poses and angles in which I look ugly – my heart doesn’t sink anymore with desperate confirmation of my worst fears about my looks. Now I just accept that in some angles, and without the redemption of the perfectly falling light, I look pretty bad, but that in some, I’ll look pretty good. I dance a lot throughout the shoot as we planned, and Sibylla captures moments which work great. It’s poetic, and it grooves. I hope you agree when you see it.

A few Vicodin, many ibuprofen, and a couple of weeks behind me, the root canals seem to have worked. I was merely the passive recipient of that private series of procedures. But the photo shoot was something else: art I could organize and participate in, creatively collaborating with other highly competent artists. It was the act of making a hyper-real, more beautiful, especially expressive me, whom I get to share with you publicly, in the hope that it helps transport you to the realm of Poetry and Groove along with the music. Now I can envision the public face of this new CD.

Glamour and image are things we construct together. They are false as art is false – and true as art is true, when we’re lucky: showing both body and soul.

Which I doubt anyone can see, even with digital x-rays, in a root canal.

copyright © 2009 Lisa Bernstein

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Letter to The New Yorker on music file sharing

2009-01-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a letter I recently sent to The New Yorker (which, incidentally, is my favorite publication for cultural criticism, all-around interesting writing both fictional and nonfictional, gorgeous clear-out-the-cobwebs copyediting for this part-time editor's brain, and vicarious hit on my favorite city in the world after Oakland, Calif.) on a rather cavalier remark made by one of the writers on sharing music files:

Dear Editors:

In her review of Elvis Costello’s television talk show, the usually reliable Nancy Franklin (“Intimate Persuasion,” December 22 & 29) writes an aside about wanting to buy digital music from Amazon instead of iTunes, because “all the music that Amazon sells is unlocked, meaning that it can be shared limitlessly with friends.” (Apple since announced that it too will unlock iTunes files.) Franklin then writes, “Music wants to be paid for, but, after that, it wants to be free.” She’s echoing a phrase batted around in discussions of the internet: Information wants to be free. I know she’s making fun of the anthropomorphizing that gives information, or music, the ability to want anything, but she’s serious about her wanting to share purchased music files. Well, while music wants nothing, I want to get paid. As a recording singer-songwriter-poet and indie label owner, my income stream is already precarious without people giving away songs of mine they’ve purchased. Does Franklin feel that when she buys a ticket to a live show, she has the right to give away a limitless number of seats, because the show wants to be free? Custom and commercial practice forbid it. In contrast, computer technology and practice have taught us to pay for the digital carrier (computers, blank CDs, email service) but not its content. How to pay content originators in a digital age is a muddle jeopardizing the survival not only of music-makers but also of newspaper and magazine owners and writers – as The New Yorker surely knows. Until the muddle is clarified, I ask Franklin and other music enthusiasts to send their friends links to Amazon, iTunes, or indie music sites, instead of sending the bootlegged music itself.

Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein)

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Lessons with Jane Sharp

2009-01-11T01:52:00.000-08:00

One day I had a lesson with my vocal coach Jane Sharp (yes, that really is her name). She was teaching me the song "The Very Thought of You." "Jazz is variation," Jane said, and we were working on the possible variations in this charming, sincere, rather straightforward tune written in 1934.

To be a jazz singer means exploring one's unique interpretation of a song, playing not only with melody, but also with the rhythms of phrases and their timing too - pushing them ahead or laying them back as the count of the song ticks on.

But meanwhile, as Jane has reminded me many times, we also have to sing the meaning of the words - say the sentences, tell the story. We emphasize certain words, we pronounce some more crisply than others, we are actors. The meaning of the lyrics influences our other musical choices. The possibilities can seem overwhelming. But if I'm guided by how I would truly speak the lyrics to someone, I find the right path: Make music, be inventive, but in the end, tell the story from my mind and heart.

Jane is an amazing teacher. Once I came into a lesson close to tears and attempted to sing a sad ballad. Jane was full of empathy, but she remained the wise and helpful coach. She said something I've never forgotten: "In life, we're destroyed. Then we sing. But not in the same instant."

Today we kept looking at a little bird outside the window. It had flown right up against the window of the lesson room, and then it hopped stunned to the roof of a shed just a couple of feet away. It was a baby. It sat silent as we worked on the new song. Finally, we were done, and my (and Jane's) singing subsided.

Then the baby bird started to sing -- or call for its mother. In life, we may be destroyed. But then we sing.

copyright 2009 Lisa Bernstein

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Magic for ’09: Lisa's Lord's Prayers

2009-01-01T17:55:00.000-08:00

Finally! So glad the page has turned. Aren’t you happy to see the new number we’re in at last? Nines are nice: triple magical, since three is a magic number and nine is thrice that.

I’m having fun looking back, looking forward, cleaning my pantry (literally!), and gathering my tools and plans. It seems an apt moment to offer a prayer/poem I wrote a few years ago, to help the new year start off right.

Lisa’s Lord’s Prayers

Our mistress
who art in star-wash
bright be thy name.
Thy queendom come,
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily mead
and forgive us our marks on others
as we forgive those who put a mark on us.
And lead us not into the underworld
but deliver us from the dark.

Our father
in the world’s waters,
glistening be thy net.
Thy currents calm,
thy steady arm
extend over these oceans.
Give us this day the fish’s flesh
and forgive our over-taking
as we forgive those who steal our catch.
And lead us not into the dark gulf
but deliver us from storms.

Our canopy
arced over the universe
untouched be thy sheen.
Thy net of time
billow and shine
in matter as in motion.
Give us today our honeycomb
and forgive us our history
as we forgive those who would forget.
And steer us away from the black holes
but toward life.

Letters of God
in every cell
golden be each stroke.
Your power come,
meaning be done
electrically in nerve and spirit.
Give us today our act of truth
and forgive our indecision
as we forgive the strong-voiced who stay mute.
And lead us not into judgment
but deliver us from fear.

Lisa,
who art alive now,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy time has come,
thy will be done
in action as in dreaming.
Give yourself this day on earth
and forgive your failings
as you forgive those who fail all around you.
And lead yourself from suffering
into joy.

Our cats,
who art in Oakland,
springy be thy paws.
Thy catfood come,
thy wishes be done
in day and night and cat-dreams.
Give us today our purr of love
and forgive our absence
as we forgive the fleas who live in your fur.
And lead us not with claw-marks
but into languorous sleep.
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PS: I don’t pray to myself in the next-to-last verse out of arrogance, though it does feel a bit radical to do so. Try it, dear reader: say a prayer to yourself as well as to the Divine – because you are both.

© 2009 Lisa Bernstein

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Grammy Nominee John Lee Hooker, Jr., & His Engineer Jim Gardiner

2008-12-29T17:48:00.000-08:00

John Lee Hooker, Jr., has been nominated for a Grammy for his third CD release “All Odds Against Me,” in the Best Traditional Blues Album category. The record was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Jim Gardiner of Oakland, Calif.’s, Pajama Studios and Touch-Tone Productions. This is the second Grammy nomination for Hooker, Jr.; Jim recorded that record too.

Because Jim is my longtime collaborator, sometime-producer, and always-engineer, I’ve been hearing about this project as it progressed. I’m very proud of Jim and very glad for Hooker, Jr. You can check out some of Jim’s compositions on his myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/touchtonehits . Don’t let the hyperbole fool you; he’s a humble, empathetic guy. And his talent spans genres, with a background including a stint as composer in residence for the state of Washington as well as doing sessions with recording artists from Deniece Williams to Pharoah Sanders to Tupac Shakur. Very few people bring such a mix of compositional and engineering chops to the recording console. Mazel tov, Jim and John Lee.

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www.itunes.com/lisab
www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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"Blue Train": The Sound of Home

2008-12-20T21:09:00.001-08:00

I put on “Blue Train” (John Coltrane, originally issued 1957) the other day and was immediately immersed in a sound so comforting and familiar that it constituted “home.”

Not that the music is in any way sentimental. And the first three tracks, midtempo and uptempo, aren’t “comforting” in a way that would make anyone want to lie down and relax. It’s just that for me, this sound was one of the main imprints of the happiest parts of my childhood. The soundtrack of Trane early and late, pulsing, singing, wailing, exploring, and somehow knowing underneath. And his committed, swinging bands driving right under and with him.

My dad was a serious Coltrane fan. He had gone to see Coltrane in clubs often enough in different cities to warrant coming up to him and saying hello between sets. My dad was an even closer friend to a number of other jazz musicians. I grew up hearing “the music” – as the musicians called it; not “jazz,” but “the music.” I certainly heard it even from the womb. Jazz listeners such as my dad experience jazz as their primary spiritual experience. My dad and the music and the depth of experience it created have been bound up together for me for as long as I can remember. Warm, creative, driving, interesting, fun – and a place for me to be all those things: home.

In some ways, this familiarity with “Blue Train” – and most of what came before and after it in jazz – was a disadvantage to me as a singer. That’s because I really understood what jazz entailed, and that was overwhelming. I admit that at times I have not only scorned but also envied those jazz singers whose bios proclaim that they became interested in jazz when they first heard Ella at 19 years old after having started out as country-western singers. Or that their parents sometimes played jazz, so they learned a few standards as teenagers and just kept going. Ah, the power of innocence. The sense that you have started to plumb something that your parents don’t really understand. That unplowed field was not for me. I knew more. Was more awed, more reluctant, more silenced by the power and history of the music. It kept me away from it for awhile as an artist.

For instance, as a child I played and studied classical piano. There was some talk of my being taught by a jazz pianist, but it didn’t happen. One day the brilliant avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor came to visit my parents and our home. This was in a period in which he was fairly shy and reticent – not the later garrulous Cecil. He asked me to play Beethoven for him. Though I was in fifth grade, maybe sixth, I had already heard a lot of Cecil’s playing on LP and live too. That was enough to keep my hands off the keys while he was there. I guess both of us were feeling shy. Except I was shy before the quiet of a volcano at rest. I guess he was shy because of being a volcano at rest.

It has surprised me whenever a self-appointed guardian of jazz feels that he (and it’s invariably a he) must bar me from that exclusive realm. Oh, and this person is invariably not a musician. Not that it’s happened often. But, readers, when it does, I remember and it stings. We all seem to remember such slurs with more sharpness than we remember the praise and appreciation, even if the latter are more voluminous than the former. One editor of a major jazz magazine declined to review my CD “What’s New, Pussycat?” because, according to my publicist, he couldn’t tell if I was being serious. (Does jazz = serious?) Another jazz vocal critic asserted in print that it wasn’t jazz I was singing, even while praising my voice. Of course, many other critics and jazz radio DJs and listeners have accepted the same record as jazz and as other things too. But when I face those fierce guardians who seek to define me out of their church, I’m dumbfounded. How can it be to not hear the core of someone whose earliest soundtrack is the sound of Coltrane (and in this case, the sound of Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones)? Can’t you hear the atmosphere in which I breathed and jumped and played as a child? The patterns that entered my own pulsebeats? They are still with me, the underpulses from which everything else springs. Home.

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www.itunes.com/lisab

www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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Rosetta and I on the Solstice

2007-12-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

No sooner did I put up my spot of blog than I proceeded into a computer meltdown. Despite the trauma, at some point I recalled something my psychic-tools teachers used to say – that sometimes when you take a spiritual/personal step forward, other peoples’ energy or old programming in your space can say No, don’t change, it’s rocking my world! and cause some bounceback. The watchword in that case is stay amused. So I did pretty well at that.

The crash was due to my clouded thinking while in stupid chase of what I thought was an undesired use of one of my tunes. My website statistics were telling me that a new movies site was generating quite a few hits to my site, and when I clicked on the url, I got a porn page. So rather than prudently exiting, no, I huffed and I puffed and I thought, “misusing my lovely rendition of ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’ from my latest album, no doubt! No no no!” And in my outrage to verify this, I even clicked on some window telling me I needed to download something, and – frozen computer, meltdown, viral attack. For some minutes I forgot that the computer was not my body, and that I was not being personally attacked by an evil virus, that it was the machine (okay, and my life stored thereon) that was under attack. The nerve. Anyway, I had done somewhat recent firewire backup, so may it actually work. I’m typing on an old computer right now, but a new one is soon to arrive. All’s well that will end well.

The year soon ends. The solstice is upon us. Holy day, shortest day, longest night, take me away. Let me recall the year and re-set myself.

In that spirit have been dusting my piano and my music books and my CDs and folders of songs in progress and notebooks of song ideas and looking at folders of my musical charts for all the songs on all my CDs. I feel proud and eager to go forward with the next.

Listening all the while to quite a bunch: Chick Corea with Anthony Braxton and Dave Holland! (a far cry from his Elektric band, thankfully), Charles Mingus (who was just too energetic and complicated for my solstice-y sorting mood), the incomparable “Compared to What” by Les McCann and Eddie Harris, a soulful jazzy David “Fathead” Newman track with Ray Charles on it, a few moments of Carmen McRae (but I couldn’t tolerate hearing her, because she’s so incisive and compelling she distracted from the task at hand), an annoying Keith Jarrett keening and humming so loudly with his wonderful standards trio that I couldn’t stand it….are you getting the picture that I’m a bit oversensitive?

But my favorite was the old-timey gospel-blues-folk singer Rosetta Tharpe from the 1930s, whom I’d never listened to before. Wow. That woman was so reassuring. I felt that I must save the box set of her music in case of some kind of disaster. I imagined myself stranded in the house after an earthquake listening to her utter truthfulness and groundedness as she sang and played guitar, and feeling okay. She sang a lot about God and Jesus, but even this Jew/goddess-communicator dug it. Rosetta seemed to have her feet on the earth, her body and voice so warmed and real, her knowledge of God and the path to heaven so sound, so sung, so matter of fact – it was like eating oatmeal for the first time (which I love), or being in a sauna, or standing on a hillside in Greece feeling the ancient truths– the “itness” of life revealed without the usual fog around it, I was there in time with it, hearing it, body and soul.

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www.itunes.com/lisab

www.myspace.com/lisablisabernstein
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LisaBLisaBernstein
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