ABOUT LISE
HER MUSIC & ART
all photos © Jim Lestrange

INTRODUCTION

Lise Winne makes her living through a number of artistic disciplines including music and several visual art mediums.

MUSIC

Lise Winne is a respected award winning musician and singer/songwriter and is a member of 2 bands, Saratoga Faire (Celtic, folk, originals) and The Spirites Consort (cross-over music which includes fresh interpretations of Renaissance, classical and folk covers as well as originals which defy easy categorization). She also occasionally plays in a duo with Jim Lestrange (who plays hammered dulcimer, bass, guitar and is a songwriter). She released 5 CDs since 1996 including the newest CD with Saratoga Faire, Saratoga Romance (2009). Her CDs include Christmastime (1996), Come To Me In Dreams (1998), Wing’d With Hopes: New Interpretations of Renaissance Songs (2001) and The Goldenrod (2004). Musicians from The Spirites Consort were heavily featured on both the Wing’d with Hopes and The Goldenrod CDs. For more information about her albums, click here.

Lise Winne began playing guitar at age 10. She was also a voracious reader and prolific writer and, in the beginning, had designs on being a novelist, poet, essayist and lyricist. During the time she attended college, she entered some creative writing contests at a writer's conference and received top awards in poetry and fiction from such renowned writers as William Bronk (National Book Award winner) and Paul Auster (well-known screenwriter, novelist and poet). Afflicted with severe asthma, Lise never thought that a career as a singer would ever be a possibility, however after many years of treatment, a path became possible.

She started out as a solo act performing a wide assortment of genres from classical to acoustic rock in 1993. After recording numerous demos of every category of music imaginable from 1996 – 1999 (the best of these recordings making it onto the “Come To Me In Dreams” album), she decided to change course. Her preferred direction was to create recordings based on a theme that would add something new and challenging to the field of music. For the first effort, she wanted to feature her classical and folk backgrounds. The union of classical music with folk music turned her in the

direction of the music of the Renaissance era. This eventually culminated after many years with her “Wing’d With Hopes” album, a recording that sounds very much like a folk album on some tracks and very classical on others and somewhere in-between on most. Her latest album, “The Goldenrod”, is even harder to categorize and has elements of jazz, folk, new age, and Renaissance. This is the album that showcases her abilities as a lyricist and composer and brings into play her creative writing experience.

Lise brought together the musicians which comprise the Spirites Consort for the “Wing’d With Hopes” CD. Each musician is classically trained and has a background in improvisational technique which provides the group with much of their signature sound. Members of the Spirites Consort are also heavily featured on “The Goldenrod” CD and portray the players other musical styles and abilities: Jeff Belding’s gifts as a rock and bluegrass player, Joe Davoli’s Irish figures on the fiddle, and Rick Eckberg’s talent as a jazz player. For more information about The Spirites Consort, click here.   

In winter of 2003, Jeff Belding and Lise Winne met up with Jim Lestrange and Frank Orsini at a Dance Flurry event. They formed Saratoga Faire that summer. The main impetus for this group was to perform folk, Celtic and originals. Half of the repertoire is made up of songs and half is instrumental. For more information about Saratoga Faire, click here.

In 1999, Lise won a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts in the field of music. 

LISE’S CURRENT CONCERT SCHEDULE

SOME OF LISE’S PAST CONCERT VENUES AND RESUME

ART

Lise received a BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College (where she won an art scholarship) and continued her education at the College of Saint Rose where she obtained a master’s degree in art education.
Lise has taught art at all levels in both public and private schools. She was also the art director at a summer camp. Specialties in art instruction include Studio Art, Ceramics, Stained Glass Design, Advertising Design, Illustration, Graphics, Fashion Design and Art History.

Lise’s pottery has many figurative elements. Emotive, spiritual and message-laden components in vessel art have always struck her as just as important as the ambition to create new, provocative, or structurally challenged work. While her vessels are simple architecturally to complement the more complex inter-relationships of figures and patterns, they are challenging in terms of height, type of clay used and sculptural appendages.

Lise’s drawings, paintings, greeting cards and works in fabric were a natural progression and in the beginning served as a kind of complement to her line of production pottery, with many of the same issues, figures and design elements.

Her heavy use of borders arose out of a habit of using the rims on her bowls, platters and vases to frame what the figures were doing inside or to give a general theme or pattern to the message of the piece. To view her web-gallery, click here.

In the Future, Lise’s plans are to integrate her music with her visual art.  

LISE’S CURRENT EXHIBITS