Lisa Morgenstern

Berlin-based composer, singer, pianist and vintage synth devotee Lisa Morgenstern first came to significant public attention with the self-release in 2019 of Chameleon. In its wake, her flourishing reputation – fuelled by compelling concerts in which her arms are often stretched either side of her as she plays multiple instruments while singing – led to performances across Europe with artists including Ólafur Arnalds and Max Cooper, as well as at festivals like Iceland Airwaves to the Reeperbahn Festival at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. She was hired to co-compose Netflix’s priority drama 'The Empress' (2022), and additional studio collaborations with Casper, Balmorhea and Aukai have emerged since Chameleon’s release. Live shows with the renowned women's Bulgarian Voices Berlin choir and, separately, the Munich Radio Orchestra meanwhile won further acclaim, with both institutions subsequently crucial to Morgenstern’s upcoming album, for which she also wrote the complex arrangements. Morgenstern's broad tastes no doubt have something to do with her upbringing as the independently-minded daughter of two orchestral musicians, one German, one Bulgarian. A lingering love of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky was tempered by a youthful passion for punk, metal and, later, goth; each of these – along with a robust hunger for all sorts of other music, whether older or more contemporary – has in some way coloured her work since.