Eliza Bagg

Eliza Bagg is a Los Angeles and New York-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.

Bagg has performed at venues around the world from David Geffen Hall to The Kitchen to Iceland Airwaves Festival, and has been featured as a soloist in new music projects with major symphonies including the Chicago Symphony, the NY Philharmonic, the LA Philharmonic, the North Carolina Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony. She has worked closely with and premiered music by composers such as Ellen Reid, Ted Hearne, Angelica Negron, Christopher Cerrone, David Lang, Bill Britelle, and Nico Muhly, among many others. 

Bagg also composes, records, and produces her own “fractured, futurist form of pop” (WNYC) as Lisel, her sweeping, ethereal avant-pop project. The music is grounded in her career as a vocalist of Renaissance, Baroque and minimalist singing styles, and she has received particular recognition for the otherworldly sound of her voice, 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).