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Lisa Maxwell's Jazz Orchestra
As a sax player, Lisa led the horn sections on the Guns 'n' Roses Use Your Illusion world tour and Spinal Tap tour. She has also performed with the Machito Big Band, Gil Evans Orchestra, Charlie Haden, Tony Scott, Hiram Bullock, Will Lee, Steven Tyler, Lenny Kravitz, Carole King, Bruce Willis Band, Chuck Berry, Smokey Hormel, Chester Whitmore, The Joni Mitchell Project, Fox TV's "Sibs" and "Phenom" (James Brooks) live studio bands, "Duckman" cartoon, the MTV Awards, and the National Association of Songwriters Awards shows.
Born in Los Angeles, Lisa started playing piano at age 6. At 15, she switched briefly to 5-string banjo, and finally settled on the saxophone. At 17, she took a film scoring class at UCLA and realized she wanted to write music for lots of instruments. Trumpeter Ray Copeland taught her jazz arranging, and Charlie Haden let her sit in on his classes at Cal Arts. Lisa attended Manhattan School of Music to study saxophone with Joe Allard, and spent most nights in clubs, where she met her musical heroes. Lisa returned to L.A. to study composing and arranging with Dick Grove in Studio City; and then won the Quincy Jones Arranging Scholarship to Berklee College of Music, where Herb Pomeroy taught her Duke Ellington's nuanced line-writing techniques.
Lisa's latest project, Shiny!, is her debut album as a composer and arranger,featuring an all-star jazz orchestra of New York's top players, including: Randy Brecker, Will Lee, Paul Shaffer, Mike Stern, Lou Marini, Mark Egan, Danny Gottlieb, Tom Malone, Ada Rovatti, Lawrence Feldman, Roger Rosenberg, Kenya Hathaway, Steven Wolf, Dave Taylor, David Mann, Pete Levin, Oz Noy, Ben Perowsky, Andy Ezrin, Alex Foster, Carmen Staaf, Dan Levine, Leni Stern, Smokey Hormel, David Delhomme, John Clark, Chris Rogers, Claire Daly, Tony Kadleck, Michael Davis, Wayne Du Maine, Beth Gottlieb, Daniel Sadownick, Bryan Davis, David Finck and Mocean Worker! Lisa currently lives in Manhattan and loves comedy.
Awards
2 Emmy Awards (group) for Best Musical Direction in a Daytime Show - "Histeria!" and "Animaniacs"
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Lisa Maxwell's Jazz Orchestra: Shiny!
by Jack Bowers
Lisa Maxwell, whose album Shiny! marks the recorded debut of her New York City-based Jazz Orchestra, is a pretty good composer and a very good arranger, even though several of her charts lean toward funk / rock, admittedly an acquired taste. Once she veers away from those two-beat cadences, as on Ludie," The Craw," Hello, Wayne?" and John Carisi's Israel," Shiny! really starts to shine. What Maxwell needs more than anything is a designer who can make her album cover ...
read moreLisa Maxwell's Jazz Orchestra: Shiny!
by Angelo Leonardi
Esce in questi giorni, dopo una lunga gestazione, il debutto da leader di Lisa Maxwell, talentosa compositrice e arrangiatrice nota nell'ambiente del jazz statunitense e negli studios di registrazione. Lisa ha orchestrato e diretto colonne sonore per film e serie televisive, collaborato anche come sassofonista con gruppi rock (Guns 'n' Roses, Lenny Kravitz, Carole King), jazz (Gil Evans, Charlie Haden) e fusion (Hiram Bullock, Will Lee). Amica di Lew Soloff dai tempi in cui il trombettista suonava ...
read moreMidwest Record, 4/22/19, by Chris Spector: LISA MAXWELL’S JAZZ ORCHESTRA/Shiny: A different kind of tribute album. This is dedicated to Lew Soloff because he kept pushing Maxwell to record a set of her own compositions and arrangements. Then he dropped dead before they could do it. As a result, every triple scale New York jazzbo showed up to leave fingerprints on this set that are anything but smudges. Delivering hits to all fields, Maxwell sheds any doubt about whether she’s ready for the big time on her own. Hands down, this is the big band set of the year. (Uncle Marvin 1) http://midwestrecord.com/MWR1513.html
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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson