About Lisa~

As a child, Lisa spent many happy hours in the public library in the rural town of Glocester, Rhode Island, dreaming of becoming a librarian when she grew up. After over a decade at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah, Lisa joined the School of Music in June 2013 as the new Director of the McKay Music Library. She brings her interests and expertise in music, languages, academic libraries, digital libraries and preservation; data curation, and instruction to her current position of leadership.

As a music librarian and scholar, one of Lisa's early projects in the School of Music has included digitizing Maurice Abravanel's Mahler symphony scores. See the digital collection portal here. Lisa has presented on various aspects of this project and Abravanel at several regional and national conferences, including the national meeting of the Music Library Association (Plenary), and the College Orchestra Directors Association.

In addition to her work as a music librarian, Lisa is an active early music performer and concert curator. She began her musical studies as a flutist in Rhode Island and discovered early music and the recorder while an undergraduate at Wellesley College. Her training in Medieval/Renaissance Studies and Musicology inform her work as a performer and teacher of early music. She has directed the University of Utah Early Music Ensemble since 2014 and seeks out collaborations from members of the local and national early music community to provide exciting musical opportunities for her students. A recent ensemble collaboration, featuring the villancico "Xicochi conetzintle" by Gaspar Fernandes (c. 1565-1629), is a wonderful example of collaboration at work.

As a public speaker in the community, Lisa has given pre-concert talks for the Salt Lake Chamber Music Society and has been the invited Women in Music  speaker for the Tau Beta Sigma Western District Conference (Idaho State University, 2017) and its local chapter, Omicron (Salt Lake City, 2019). Her presentation,  "To the Unknown Goddess": Hear our Voices! , is rich with details that bring her own personal musical history and the history of women in music—from Hidegard von Bingen (1098–1170) to Delia Derbyshire (1937–2001)—together.