Lisa Dae

In the Pacific Northwest, where she built her career, Lisa Dae is fearless in approaching material. With a 3 octave + vocal range, there is not a song or a style that she cannot do. She has been described as a vocal chameleon who "can sound husky or crisp, ebullient or wailing, girlish or jaded. Her gifting is in her phrasing.”

Dae's fascination with music began early. She would for-go recess as early as 2nd grade, just so she could play the auto-harp. In the fourth grade she took up the cello, but by the time she entered Jr high school, she switched to the French horn. Her family had moved to Roseburg, OR. Here’s what she said about her childhood:

"Growing up, my dad was a big jazz fan and we had a lot of jazz music around the house. Both my parents were happy to encourage my interest in music. Even though we had little money with a family of 6, my mother was able to buy me a piano at the age of 5. I was addicted. My father and I had a special bond when it came to music; we would spend hours talking about Frank Sinatra and what made him so good.”

"We listened to all the great stuff. I really liked the music from the thirties and forties, early Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday. I used to listen to a lot of Frank Sinatra. In Jr high my sister had introduced me to Kenny Rankin. He was my teacher. I owe a lot to him. I would spend hours upon hours trying to imitate him. It wasn’t until my brother brought his girlfriend home to hear me sing, that I considered singing my passion, I just knew I loved, loved, loved music. While I was teaching myself to sing, I haunted used record stores. I'd choose anybody I thought would be interesting, and I'd just pick some people I'd never heard of and bring them home.

"I listened to instrumentalists, too, including Dizzy Gillespie and Art Farmer. My dad had a lot of West Coast jazz, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, TMJ Quartet, Oscar Peterson, and Peter Nero. I listened to them, but I focused on the singers. I learned by singing along with them. I decided if I wanted to be a professional singer, I had to be able to keep up with them. I took my first voice lesson at 14. I had never been exposed to classical music but from the 9th grade on, I joined every choir I could. My high school choir teacher, David Poole was instrumental in coaxing me to a College that was classically oriented so that I could learn to sing correctly which in turn would “allow you to sing anything you want the way that you want to”. After a year of Jr College, she headed to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA and became a member of the Choir of the West. She never lost sight of wanting to sing jazz”.

After College in Seattle, she wanted to sing mainstream jazz, but without contacts in jazz took work as a singing waitress at the airport, and alto section leader opportunities. “A friend of mine suggested that I do wedding receptions.’ People get paid for that? I made some good money but it didn’t lead anywhere musically. I joined the Percy Munson big band for a bit but didn’t get to sing but a few songs at a time. I had my finger in a bunch of different pies to try to get as much work as possible."

In 1987 she got married and had two children which took her out of the music scene up until 2007 when she moved to Bend, Oregon. “I moved to Bend to run a company my brother owned. He hired me on as the General Manager. I was not singing at all. In 2008 when the economy went south, so did my job. I knew it was now or never if I was to ever pursue my life’s passion. I saw a catalog for a jazz singing class at Cascade School of Music and I enrolled. It lit me up. I then sat down with my sister-in-law and we mapped out a plan of action on everything I would need to do to get from where I was (no singing) to a singer with her own trio. Show less