We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lisa Neher. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lisa below.

Alright, Lisa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

It’s hard to choose just one project! An impactful experience that comes to mind is the creation of No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us, a major, 35-minute song cycle about the climate change crisis. Mezzo-soprano Quinn Patrick Ankrum and pianist Elizabeth Avery reached out to me in the fall of 2020 with the vision to create a large-scale song cycle drawing attention to the climate crisis. We then partnered with poets Craig Santos Perez and Felicia Zamora, whose poetry forms the text for the cycle. This entire project was created during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The performers wanted a way to perform it without being together in the same space. Jonah Elrod, a composer who is an expert in electronic music, designed a digital process to allow this collaboration to happen. Quinn, with the help of recording engineer Kate Bohanan, recorded all of the vocal parts in small chunks. Jonah’s digital process allowed Elizabeth to play piano live while triggering each vocal event with a foot pedal. One of the reasons this project means so much to me is that it was deeply collaborative, from the initial concept that the performers came to me with through the writing process, which involved consultation with the performers, Jonah, and the poets, through the rehearsal and performance in October of 2021. With such a vitally important topic, and it being my first piece of overtly “political” music I have ever composed, it was so important to have this community co-parenting the work and working together to make it a success. The piece continues to evolve, as we created a version for live performance, with both performers in the same space, and workshopped it in Oklahoma last spring. I’m so excited for that version to be performed live in the near future.

Lisa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a classically-trained mezzo-soprano, composer, actress, and educator. I sing opera, musical theatre, chamber music, and choral music, and I write original music for individual performers as well as ensembles such as choirs, orchestras, string quartets, opera companies, and more. Musicians and ensembles commission new pieces from me, and after they have had a chance to give them a premiere (first performance) and sometimes an exclusivity period (usually a year), the pieces are available for sale as sheet music to others. I also have a teaching/coaching studio, in which I work with singers and composers on developing their craft and also the business and life of being an artist. Oftentimes, musicians complete one or more degrees and then are left to their own devices when it comes to building a career or figuring out how to make money to support their musical goals. I provide a bridge to those musicians, teaching them tools of networking, pitching projects, self-producing, audience building, etc, while also nurturing the joy and love of music that got them into this in the first place.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I was pretty late to the social media party, so I lurked a lot to try to figure out just what on earth was going on with these platforms! I read a lot of the posts of others and noticed what resonated with me and what didn’t. This is going to sound strange given Twitter’s reputation, but there is a lovely, warm-hearted community of classical musicians, particularly those of us interested in creating and performing new classical/concert music, on Twitter. I started to have conversations with those folks, and see ways that I could help support them. Sometimes it was by sharing my experiences or offering advice, sometimes it was by posting about their event, sometimes it was just a “huzzah!” in reply when they were celebrating a success. This eventually led me to see the areas of the conversation I could lead: how to write effective music for singers, how to get back into a practice routine after falling out of vocal shape, how to start networking and pitching projects.

For those starting to build a social media presence, my advice is to think of any social media platform as the lobby at a conference or the reception after a concert. What kinds of things would you talk about? Who would you converse with? What would you share? A challenge many folks get into on social media is that they start selling right away. No one wants to be sold to the moment they meet you, and you probably wouldn’t do this if you were meeting someone in real life in one of those scenarios I laid out. Folks want to get to know you. That includes sharing about your work, but also about hobbies or your favorite dessert or your pet. It includes listening, supporting, and conversing with folks—responding to their posts and getting to know them. Finally, just like in real life, you have to show up consistently if you want to build community on social media. It takes time. Carve out 10 minutes, 3 times a week, go for quality conversation rather than quantity, and do that for 3 or 6 months. See what happens!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding moments for me are when someone tells me that my art impacted them. I’m a musician because when I was young, playing and singing music opened up a world to me to express myself and feel more fully human. I went to concerts and plays that I still think about to this day. I remember thinking, I have got to be a part of this if I possibly can! Last year, a young musician performed a piano piece I wrote. They told me it was their favorite piece they had ever played. That’s the best compliment I’ve ever received! I think we’re all yearning for a little more softness, a little more humanity, feeling, vulnerability, and understanding from one another. The arts do that. They have the potential to be the opposite of capitalism, the thing that helps ground us in things that matter more than anything we can put a price tag on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lisanehermusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisanehermezzo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LisaNeherMusic
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LisaNeher
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/lisaneher

Image Credits
Alisabeth von Presley