Lisa Gerrard

Lisa Germaine Gerrard (born 12 April 1961) is an Australian musician, singer and composer and member of the music group Dead Can Dance with music partner Brendan Perry.

She is known for her unique singing style technique (glossolalia).

She has a dramatic contralto voice and has a vocal range of three octaves.

Gerrard first began forming bands and creating original music as a member of Melbourne's Little Band scene, an experimental post-punk scene which flourished from 1978 until 1981.

It was in this scene that she first met Dead Can Dance co-founder Brendan Perry.

Perry recalls, "It never occurred to me that we would one day collaborate musically together because at the time I thought her music was too avant-garde. I particularly remember one song that she sang about finding a man in the park and asking her mother if she could bring him home to keep in her wardrobe as she attacked this chinese dulcimer with two bamboo sticks".

Around this time, Gerrard became the lead vocalist of Microfilm, which released "Window", and one single, "Centrefold", in 1980, via Unforgettable Music label.

Born and raised in Melbourne, Gerrard played a pivotal role in the city's Little Band scene and fronted post-punk group Microfilm before co-founding Dead Can Dance in 1981.

With Perry, she explored numerous traditional and modern styles, laying the foundations for what became known as neoclassical dark wave.

She sings sometimes in English and often in a unique language that she invented.

In addition to singing, she is an instrumentalist for much of her work, most prolifically using the yangqin (a Chinese hammered dulcimer).

The group issued a third song, "Summer House", on Ron Rude's From Belgrave With Love compilation, which was released by Cleopatra Records in 1981.

Dead Can Dance originally formed as a quartet in 1981 in Melbourne, with members Gerrard, Perry, bassist Paul Erikson, and drummer Simon Monroe.

By 1982, Gerrard, Perry and Erikson decided to relocate to London, but Monroe decided to stay in Australia, leaving the band as a trio.

Dead Can Dance recorded seven studio albums on the 4AD Records recording label—beginning with the self-titled Dead Can Dance LP in 1984, and two studio albums released by PIAS Recordings.

Gerrard's first solo album, The Mirror Pool, was released in 1995.

In 1995, Gerrard recorded and released her first solo album, The Mirror Pool, accompanied by the Victorian Philharmonic Orchestra.

The album peaked at No. 38 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums Chart on 9 September 1995, and was on that chart for one week.

Dead Can Dance's albums Spiritchaser (1996) and Anastasis (2012) both reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top World Music Albums Chart.

She has been involved in a wide range of projects, starting her first collaborative album in 1998 with Pieter Bourke, and then with various artists throughout her career, who comprised Patrick Cassidy, Klaus Schulze, Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone, Zbigniew Preisner among others.

She has scored numerous award-winning motion picture soundtracks.

The band split in 1998, but reunited in 2005 for a world tour.

In 1998 she recorded Duality in collaboration with composer Pieter Bourke.

The album went to No. 23 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums Chart on 2 May 1998; it was present on the chart for two weeks.

Duality would mark the beginning of an extensive collaboration for a number of film scores, including The Insider and Ali.

She received a Golden Globe Award for the music score to the 2000 film Gladiator, on which she collaborated with Hans Zimmer.

She wrote the score of Balibo which went on to win an ARIA award for Best Original Soundtrack and an APRA Screen music award for Best feature film score.

Overall she has won 11 awards receiving 23 nominations.

Gerrard has been nominated for a Grammy Award twice.

Gerrard is often affiliated with the "wailing woman" music phenomena, popularized in Gladiator.

Lisa Gerrard was born in Melbourne to Irish immigrant parents, and grew up in Prahran, an inner suburb with a substantial Greek population.

She recalled growing up with "Mediterranean music blaring out of the houses" and said that this influenced her music, particularly on later Dead Can Dance albums and in her solo and collaborative works.

Gerrard began a new collaboration with composer Patrick Cassidy in 2004 with the release of Immortal Memory.

Again, this collaboration was furthered in film work, including Salem's Lot.

The following year in 2005, Gerrard contributed to the Ashes and Snow Soundtrack.

For the songs "Womb" and "Wisdom", she and Patrick Cassidy wrote and performed together.

Her collaboration with Cassidy extended to include work with conductor Julie Rogers on the songs "Devota" and "Vespers".

In 2012, the band announced a new world tour to coincide with the release of their new album, Anastasis.

As of 2020, Gerrard has released four solo albums and collaborated on sixteen albums.

She composed and contributed the scores to more than 48 movies.