Book Lisa Gerrard

Lisa Gerrard is an Australian singer and composer whose dark, three-octave contralto is instantly recognisable to film audiences. Born in Melbourne in April 1961, she came up through the city's Little Band scene and the post-punk group Microfilm before founding Dead Can Dance with Brendan Perry in 1981. Across their albums the pair blended ancient, world and modern sounds into what came to be called neoclassical dark wave, and Gerrard often sang in a language of her own invention while playing the yangqin, a Chinese hammered dulcimer. She stayed with the group until 2022. Her solo debut, The Mirror Pool, arrived in 1995, followed by collaborations with Pieter Bourke, Patrick Cassidy, Klaus Schulze, Ennio Morricone and Zbigniew Preisner. Working alongside Hans Zimmer on the score for Gladiator earned her a Golden Globe, and her music for Balibo won both an ARIA and an APRA screen award. She has contributed to the scores of over forty films, picked up two Grammy nominations and continues to compose and perform.