Eliza Bagg

Eliza Bagg is a Los Angeles based experimental musician, working primarily as a vocalist in the field of contemporary classical music along with producing her own work. She has collaborated across genres with prominent experimental artists ranging from performing in Meredith Monk’s opera Atlas with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (dir. Yuval Sharon, Walt Disney Hall 2019) to touring regularly as a member of Roomful of Teeth, singing the music of Julius Eastman with the LA Phil (The Ford Theater 2021), playing the role of Ape in Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta (dir. Daniel Fish, Prototype Festival 2018, Bard Summerscape 2019), or singing chamber motets by John Zorn. She recently premiered a new piece by Ellen Reid as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic (David Geffen Hall 2020), and worked collaboratively with Ted Hearne on his theatrical song cycle “Dorothea” (CAP-UCLA 2021). Her singing has been called “ethereal” by The New York Times and “gossamer” by The New Yorker.

In the 2022-2023 season, Bagg will perform the role of Girl Angel in Du Yun’s opera Angel’s Bone with Renaissance Opera, sing a premiere by Yaz Lancaster in Song Cycles at Harlem Stage with Beth Morrison Projects, play the role of Siren 2 in The Night Falls by Ellis Ludwig-Leone with American Opera Projects and BalletCollective, and reprise Ludwig-Leone’s False We Hope with the Attacca Quartet. As both a vocalist and composer, she will workshop Expostulation(s) of Mary, a new chamber opera for voices, strings, dance, and electronics, expanding Henry Purcell’s The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation into a lattice of ancient and new music. She is also participating in a tour encapsulating CSO, BSO, San Francisco Symphony, and the Nashville Symphony with the Lorelei Ensemble as they premiere Julia Wolfe’s piece for voices and orchestra, HERSTORY, as well as appearing at the 2023 Big Ears Festival singing the chamber music of John Zorn

Other recent performance highlights include singing several pieces as a soloist on a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (April 2022) along with improvising throughout the evening with violinist Pekka Kuusisto, multiple performances at the 2022 Big Ears Festival (March 2022), and performing a role in the opera Iphigenia by Esperanza Spalding and Wayne Shorter (Feb 2022). She has worked closely with and premiered music by composers such as David Lang, Ted Hearne, Caroline Shaw, Michael Gordon, Ellen Reid, Christopher Cerrone, John Zorn, Bill Britelle, and Angélica Négron, among many others.

Bagg has performed as a soloist in new music projects with major symphonies including the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the North Carolina Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony, and has performed at venues around the world from Walt Disney Hall and Carnegie Hall to the Kitchen and Iceland Airwaves. 

Called “otherworldly, warped” (Stereogum) and “billowing, crystalline” (Gorilla vs. Bear), Lisel is Bagg’s sweeping, ethereal avant-pop project.  A “fractured, futurist form of pop” (WNYC), Lisel’s music is grounded in her extensive career as a vocalist of Renaissance, Baroque and minimalist/post-minimalist singing styles, as she “disintegrates her voice into a euphoric, Auto-Tuned goo, emerging from the other side of the abyss an electro-pop alien” (NPR). As Lisel, Bagg has received particular recognition for her use of extended vocal techniques and unique vocal sound, which Pitchfork compared to "a lovelorn alien reaching out from the farthest reaches of the galaxy.” She self-produces the music, usually beginning with manipulated vocal samples, processed vocal improvisations, or patterns built from extended techniques, and her voice grounds the otherworldly landscape of her music, which “revels in small electro-pop ecstasies that burrow inward” (NPR).

She has sung with groups like Wild Up, Talea Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Lorelei Ensemble, Trinity Wall Street Choir, A Far Cry, New Morse Code, andplay, NOW Ensemble, TENET, Conspirare, and Victoire (among others). Recent work with electronic, pop, and indie-rock artists include Lorde, Kevin Morby, Current Joys, Surf Curse, Tim Hecker, GABI, Olga Bell, Nick Zammuto, Helado Negro, Julianna Barwick, and San Fermin.

Bagg graduated in 2012 with a BA from Yale University. She was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina where she spent most of her time playing violin and studying modern dance.