Contact
Departments
Courses Taught
Business for Media Composers
Education
MFA, Mills College
BA, Mills College
Awards & Distinctions
NEA Grant
Fulbright Scholarship Finalist
WEA Award for Best Album 'Songs from the Mara'
Q&A
What is your hometown?
San Francisco
What is your favorite recording? Why?
Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber because music is so powerful. Just thinking about it makes me cry.
What are you passionate about outside of music?
Dancing. Nature. Family, in the personal and global sense. All of this is my family.
Who were your major teachers?
Terry Riley, Allaudin Mathieu, Anatole Kitain
What is a favorite quote that you repeatedly tell students?
Trust yourself
What question do you wish students would ask sooner rather than later?
What does my heart tell me to do?
What was a turning point in your career?
When I changed my name from Phyllis to my family nickname Lis. Suddenly, the real me appeared and it has been uphill since.
If you weren't a musician or teacher, what do you think you would be doing now?
Dancer. Environmental Restoration.
What is your daily practice routine?
Vocal warmups, piano exercises and playing Ngoni before bed to relax. When I'm in production I'm at my computer all day, hopping between piano parts, vocals & composing.
From a music history perspective, what year and city are most important to you, and why?
Paris during the Belle Époque because the so-called Impressionist music of this era (Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns) gave rise to the later minimalists by whom I have been greatly influenced and because there was still a sense of optimism in the music prior to the 2 World Wars of the 20th century.
What is your unrealized project?
Touring multi-media project with electronics, live musicians, dance and projections
What recordings can we hear you on?
The Song of the Tree, Songs from the Mara, Windows to the Light, Zadaka, Elements; All Aglow Music Record Label
Media
Playlist: This is Lis Addison (Spotify)
Biography
Lis Addison is a Composer, Musician and Producer specializing in electro-acoustic vocal music in the Classical Crossover, World, New Age, Ambient and Electronic Music genres. She has composed and produced eighteen solo albums, soundtracks for film and dance and has over 25 Million streams online. She runs her own Record Label and Publishing company All Aglow Music.
Addison has toured in Australia, Canada, France, Israel, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland, Tanzania, the UK and the US. Her music has received favorable reviews in Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe, India, Korea, Mexico, Russia and the US. Lis has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pacific Composer's Forum, the World Entertainment Awards and the Global Music Awards among others. Her last five albums have been in the top 10 of the International Charts.
Lis is also a dancer and the creator of Kinetic Voice a vocal and dance program for health and wellness. She is also the Founding Director of the Singing Tree Institute non-profit and she and her team have planted more than 8,000 trees in Kenya.
Lis holds a BA in music composition and environmental science and an MFA in electronic music from Mills College. She has taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Expressions Digital Arts College and at the Globe Sound Healing Institute in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been invited to teach Electronic Music at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, as a Fulbright Scholarship finalist.