Lisa Germaine Gerrard (/dʒəˈrɑːrd/ jə-RARD; born 12 April 1961) is an Australian musician, singer and composer and member of the group Dead Can Dance with music partner Brendan Perry.

Born and raised in Melbourne, Gerrard played a pivotal role in the city's Little Band scene and fronted post-punk group Microfilm before co-founding Dead Can Dance in 1981.

She has been involved in a wide range of projects, starting her first collaborative album in 1998 with Pieter Bourke, and then with various artists throughout her career, who comprised Patrick Cassidy, Klaus Schulze, Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone, Zbigniew Preisner among others.

[3] Lisa Gerrard was born in Melbourne to Irish immigrant parents, and grew up in Prahran, an inner suburb with a substantial Greek population.

I particularly remember one song that she sang about finding a man in the park and asking her mother if she could bring him home to keep in her wardrobe as she attacked this chinese dulcimer with two bamboo sticks".

[5] Around this time, Gerrard became the lead vocalist of Microfilm, which released "Window", and one single, "Centrefold", in 1980, via Unforgettable Music label.

[6] The group issued a third song, "Summer House", on Ron Rude's From Belgrave With Love compilation, which was released by Cleopatra Records in 1981.

[6] Dead Can Dance originally formed as a quartet in 1981 in Melbourne, with members Gerrard, Perry, bassist Paul Erikson, and drummer Simon Monroe.

It is the work of producer and director Clive Collier and features extensive interviews with Gerrard and various people who have collaborated with her in the past, including Michael Mann, Russell Crowe, Hans Zimmer and Niki Caro.

[35] In 2009, Gerrard completed work on the documentary by Australian adventurer Tim Cope called On the Trail of Genghis Khan and contributed her voice to the soundtrack, which began airing in 2010, of the Japanese NHK taiga drama Ryōmaden, a story based on the life of Sakamoto Ryōma.

[36] In September 2009, Gerrard and Schulze performed another tour in six European cities – Warsaw, Berlin, Amsterdam, Essen, Paris, and Brussels.

The album included collaborations with Patrick Cassidy, Michael Edwards, Pieter Bourke and James Orr and was the first release to come from Gerrard Records.

Gerrard also collaborated with multi-instrumentalist Prash Mistry, from UK based live dubstep collective Engine Earz Experiment, on a track titled "Spirit Guide", which appeared on his 2011 album.

[39] In 2014, Gerrard collaborated with British composer, songwriter and producer, Chicane, on the album The Sum of Its Parts, released on 25 January 2015 by Modena Records.

[41] On 14 March 2018, Gerrard performed a concert at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia with Genesis Orchestra, conducted by Yordan Kamdzhalov, entitled Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Górecki.

[44] Also in 2018, Gerrard teamed with solo percussionist David Kuckhermann to compose and record an album, Hiraeth, released on 6 August 2018.

[47] Gerrard toured as a special guest with the eighteen choir members of the Mystery of Bulgarian Voices, performing fifteen select dates across Europe from 12 March to 20 October 2019.

Gerrard's score for the New Zealand independent film Whale Rider consisted entirely of solo material; a soundtrack album was released by 4AD.

With Dead Can Dance, she provided several contributions to the soundtrack of Baraka, a visual journey showcasing mankind's impact on the planet.

She finished 2009 by contributing her voice to the theme song for the Japanese NHK taiga drama Ryōmaden, which began airing in 2010.

In November 2010, Gerrard provided vocals and additional music for the post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller Priest, scored by Christopher Young, which was released in 2011.

[53] Her vocal timbre has been described as "rich, deep" which creates a "mournful sound", and her voice is regarded by critics as "simply not of this world".

[62] Jon Pareles of The New York Times said that she uses "distinct voices that drew on far-flung traditions: an opalescent tone from Baroque opera, a reedy hint of Celtic folk style, the sharp and quavering approach of Balkan women's music, blue notes bent like Billie Holiday's...".

[66][44] Gerrard's influences on the language she sings since her youth has been exerted mainly by the conversations and the music she heard in the Melbourne area where she had grown up, where a large Greco-Turkish community lived.

[67] Gerrard's first musical influences came from her father, as she grew up listening to sean-nós songs in an Irish family, and also the "abstract forms" with which Antonin Artaud worked that she heard on radio documentaries.