Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area composer, bassist, bandleader and producer. Called “one of the most imaginative figures on the Bay Area creative jazz scene” by the San Jose Mercury News and “a Bay Area treasure” by KQED national public radio, she was voted “Rising Star Bassist” in the 2013 and 2014 Downbeat Jazz Critics Polls. Mezzacappa’s activities as a composer and bandleader are diverse, and include ethereal chamber music, electro-acoustic works, avant-garde jazz, music for groups from duo to large ensemble, and collaborations with film, video, sculpture and installation art. Recent projects include works inspired by noir crime fiction; by Victorian lady adventurers; and by vintage Italian science fiction comic books. Mezzacappa has been awarded residencies and grants from Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, the MAP Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Cité International des Arts (Paris), and the Andy Warhol Foundation, among others.
