Music

Bells and Whistles

Listening to music through a smartphone speaker ​is like viewing a rainbow in the dark.

Melissa Jordan Grey laying on piano and laughing

Who’s Lissa Free?

I used to think I had to separate my creative persona from my professional one. As a result, I created “Lissa Free” as my “nom du musicien’. Over time, I realized that my entrepreneurship bleeds into my art and vice versa. (See “What do you do, anyway?) Plus, the world got better at understanding amalgamous people like me. Still, the name sticks and thus you’ll still find my music performed as “Lissa Free.”

I sang before I talked, and played piano before I walked. Music is, no doubt, my first language and the one I am most fluent in even today. My head overflows with melody, whether in line at the grocery store or cleaning out my garage.

I started as a jazz saxophonist and studio player in my teens. I had the great privilege of once playing with Count Basie, Harry James, and Maynard Ferguson. As my interest in film grew, I gravitated to scoring, then ultimately songwriting and recording.

I enjoy exploring the intersection of analog and digital, as well as what we see on the surface vs what’s really happening inside.

 

Discography

 

Melissa Jordan Grey

Retrofusion

As my parents reached their twilight years, I began to reflect on my early childhood, the 1970s prime of their young adulthood. The result is Retrofusion, a concept record that asks the question, “What if artists of the 70s had the recording technology of today?” The tracks are musically inspired by 70s artists such as Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind, and Fire, which the project is lyrically inspired by my process of reckoning with their impending passing.

 
Melissa Jordan Grey

Delayed Gratification

For years, motherhood and entrepreneurship kept me out of the studio but it didn’t stop the barrage of music from swimming in my head. Delayed Gratification is a collection of recordings I’ve made while my boys were young and encapsulate the experiences of this transformative period of time when life both shifts and settles. In creating it, I enjoyed playing with the intersection of analog and digital instrumentations, often mixing an upright bass with programmed rhythms.

 

find my music on these networks

 

ACRCloud

Aerasonica Records

Amazon

Anghami

Apple Music

Boomplay

CD Baby

ClaroMusica

Deezer

Epitome Music Library

Google Play

Gracenote

iHeartRadio

Instagram/Facebook

iTunes

​Jango Radio

Jaxsta

Joox

KKBox

Kuack Media

Last.fm

Luna

MediaNet

Mrc

MusicXRay

Musync

Napster

NetEase

Outbound Music

Pandora

Qobuz

Resso

ReverbNation

Saavn

Shazam

Song and Film

Soundcloud

Soundtrack by Twitch

Spotify

Suckfree Radio

Tencent

Tidal

TikTok

Triller

WOS Radio

Yandex Music

YouTube Music

Previous
Previous

Mixed Media

Next
Next

Performance