Eliza Bagg

BIOGRAPHY

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 with prominent experimental artists, performing in Meredith Monk’s opera Atlas with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (dir. Yuval Sharon, Walt Disney Hall 2019), touring regularly as a member of Roomful of Teeth, playing the role of Ape in Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta (dir. Daniel Fish, Prototype Festival 2018, Bard Summerscape 2019), or singing new music by John Zorn. She has premiered work by Ellen Reid as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic (David Geffen Hall 2020), Boston Symphony (Symphony Hall 2022, Tanglewood 2023), and LA Philharmonic (WDCH 2022), performed and recorded with the Attacca String Quartet, and worked collaboratively with Ted Hearne on his theatrical song cycle Dorothea (Carnegie Hall 2023). Her singing has been called “ethereal” and “luminous” by The New York Times and “gossamer” by The New Yorker.

In the 2023-24 season, Bagg will originate a role in a new opera, over and over vorbei night vorbei by Ted Hearne and director Daniel Fish at the Komische Oper Berlin, and will join Hearne for performances of Dorothea at Carnegie Hall and Festival Musica Strasbourg. She will tour Ellis Ludwig Leone’s False We Hope for voice, string quartet, and electronics across venues in Europe, and perform works by Ellen Reid and Meredith Monk at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Bagg will also perform her own work along with collaborative projects during a weeklong residency at The Stone at the New School, and will bring performances of her experimental vocal album Patterns for Auto-tuned Voices and Delay to the Bemis Center, Gather NYC, and Birds of Paradise Festival, along with doing an EU/UK tour. She will also workshop and perform new works for Roomful of Teeth by Gabriel Kahane and Pamela Z.

Bagg is known for her unique performance and improvisational practice, and frequently develops new work in collaboration with composers. She has performed many roles in new operas such as Ted Hearne’s over and over vorbei nicht vorbei at the Komische Opera Berlin (2024), Dylan Mattingly’s Stranger Love with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2023), Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone at Renaissance Opera (2022), Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta at the Prototype Festival and Bard Summerscape (2018, 2019), Yaz Lancaster’s Paper Tiger with Opera Philadelphia (2023), Ash Fure’s Hive Rise with The Industry (2021), and Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding’s Iphigenia at Cal Performances (2022). She sang 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, performed at the 2022 and 2023 Big Ears Festivals, and presented her own collaborative chamber opera, Expostulation(s) of Mary, for voices, strings, dance, and electronics, which expanded Henry Purcell’s The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation into a lattice of ancient and new music.

She has worked closely on chamber music projects with prominent instrumentalists and ensembles including the Attacca String Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, Claire Chase, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Wild Up, and A Far Cry, and has worked on new music with composers like Missy Mazzoli, Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw, David Lang, Gabriel Kahane, Angelica Negron, and Bill Britelle, among many others. She has also collaborated with artists outside of the classical world, like singing on Vampire Weekend’s new album “Only God Was Above Us,” and performing in a series of live videos with Lorde recorded at Electric Lady Studios. Bagg has also sung on scores for multiple television shows, including prominent features in Nico Muhly’s score for Pachinko.

Bagg has sung on multiple GRAMMY-winning and nominated albums including Roomful of Teeth’s Rough Magic, and Wild Up’s Julius Eastman compendiums, and performed as a soloist with major symphonies including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has performed at venues around the world from the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Concertgebouw to the Kitchen and Iceland Airwaves.

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Bagg’s compositional work is grounded in the human voice mediated by technology, as she combines virtuosic singing with electronic processing, exploring the “valley between authenticity and artifice” (The Guardian). Dubbed an “electro-pop alien” (NPR), her recently critically acclaimed album Patterns For Auto-tuned Voices And Delay (Ba Da Bing Records, 2023) combines medieval and minimalist vocal styles and idioms with vocal effects, creating "gleaming electro-hymns" (Uncut Magazine) and re-contextualizing these musical languages and the spiritual nature of layered, choral singing within a technological, futuristic sensibility.  A “fractured, futurist form of pop” (WNYC), Lisel’s music is grounded in her extensive classical career as she creates “sound that feels both ancient and modern; chrome-tinted harmonies woven together to form intricate latticeworks” (Bandcamp Daily). She self-produces the music, usually beginning with manipulated vocal samples, processed vocal improvisations, or patterns built from extended techniques, and her vocal sound, which Pitchfork compared to "a lovelorn alien reaching out from the farthest reaches of the galaxy” grounds the otherworldly landscape of her music.

She has released multiple albums on Ba Da Bing Records and Luminelle Records as Lisel, and several albums while a member of indie-rock band Pavo Pavo on Bella Union.

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.