While Lesa Carlson's primary passion is music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, she is also an actress, raw foods chef, choreographer, and a former Miss Idaho

Idaho

Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....

 in the America's Miss Pageant. Her background includes three years of opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 training, awards bestowed in both New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, and performances with members of the Turkish National Symphony.

Music

"Blue mod" singer Lesa Carlson founded and creatively directed Lesa Carlson Off Blue, a critically acclaimed jazz ensemble fusing old-school jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, turntablism

Turntablism

Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer.The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...

, and multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

. Weaving turntablism with improvised jazz vocals and grooves, Carlson combines seemingly disparate forms in her music. Lesa has performed at the House of Blues, the Hotel Niko, the Three of Clubs, 02 (Woody Harrelson

Woody Harrelson

Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...

's restaurant), and the premier party for Steve Martin

Steve Martin

Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....

 and Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy

Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician....

's feature film Bowfinger

Bowfinger

Bowfinger is a 1999 comedy cult film directed by Frank Oz. It depicts a down-and-out filmmaker in Hollywood attempting to make a film on a small budget with a star who does not know that he is in the film...

. She also held artist residencies at The Knitting Factory, Atlas and Louis XIV. Over the years she has played with Soko Richardson

Soko Richardson

Soko Richardson was an American rhythm and blues drummer. His career spanned almost fifty years, during which he performed and recorded with seminal groups including John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and the The Ike & Tina Turner Revue...

, Kenny Moore

Kenny Moore

Kenneth Clark "Kenny" Moore is an American athlete and journalist. At the University of Oregon, Moore was one of Bill Bowerman's finest distance runners. After college, Moore ran in the Olympic marathon at both Mexico City and Munich, finishing fourth in 1972...

, Jack Sheldon

Jack Sheldon

Jack Sheldon is an American bebop and West Coast jazz trumpeter, singer, and actor. He is a trumpet player and was a comedian on The Merv Griffin Show, as well as the voice heard on several episodes of the educational music television series Schoolhouse Rock.-Biography:Sheldon was born in...

, and Linda Hopkins

Linda Hopkins

Linda Hopkins is an African American actress and blues and gospel singer. She has recorded classic, traditional, and urban blues, and performed R&B and soul, jazz, and show tunes, all with distinction and style since the 1950s....

. Lesa is currently working in the studio with producers Chris Gubisch and grammy nominated Bruce Sugar. Recently recorded singles include "Laissez-Faire" and "Robert Johnson Motherfucker."

Evolution Into the Conscious Revolution (Strange Fruit Records, 2003)

Evolution Into the Conscious Revolution is a fully improvised jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 album weaving bassist Miles Mosley

Miles Mosley

Miles Mosley is a vocalist, bassist, guitarist, pianist, composer and arranger from Hollywood California named after Miles Davis.-Life and career:...

 and drummer Robert Perkins together with Lesa Carlson's vocal abstractions throughout the album. "Carlson belts like the love child of Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison

James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...

 and Grace Slick

Grace Slick

Grace Slick is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and was a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s...

, a chanteuse-turned-shaman, twisting familiar standards like "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" into beat-poet meditations and crooning hypnotic originals like "Lessons of the Leaves" like she's summoning up some old pagan earth god for a little jam session." (add citation here) Add turntablist effects featuring Martin Luther King samples, a trumpet

Trumpet

The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

, and a flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

, and you've got Evolution Into the Conscious Revolution.

Tracks:

Brother Can You Spare A Dime 4:17

Serenade The Sea 6:04

Nature Boy 6:12

Evolution 4:29

Her Nursery 5:38

Lesson of the Leaves 3:48

Lazy Days 5:52

Your Face 6:59

Change 6:40

Blue, Yellow and Green 4:16

Lesa also worked on the album with trumpeter Bryan Lipps, Gimel Hooper & Edward Alfonso on turntables, and flutist Harold Bennett. Songs written and produced by Lesa Carlson. Co-produced by Jon Griffin. Recorded in 2002 at the Center for the Recording Arts, Los Angeles.

Acting

Lesa is a professional actor working both in film and in theater. She's a life member of The Actor's Studio (Presidents: Ellen Burstyn, Harvey Keitel, Al Pacino, Martin Landau & Mark Rydell.) Film roles have included Flesh Suitcase, Last Escape, Silk Stalkings, Dangerous Waters and Luster. Her acting manager is Charles Kienzle with Sweet Revenge Entertainment.

Influences

Lesa's influences are Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen

Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...

, Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...

, Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

, Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Rowan Hitchcock is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. While primarily a vocalist and guitarist, he also plays harmonica, piano and bass guitar....

, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Grace Jones

Grace Jones

Grace Jones is a Jamaican-American singer, model and actress.Jones secured a record deal with Island Records in 1977, which resulted in a string of dance-club hits. In the late 1970s, she adapted the emerging electronic music style and adopted a severe, androgynous look with square-cut hair and...

, Martha Graham

Martha Graham

Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...

, Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...

, Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

, Nina Simone

Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...

, Julie Mcginnis, Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

, Betty Carter

Betty Carter

Betty Carter was an American jazz singer renowned for her improvisational technique and idiosyncratic vocal style...

, Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...

, Bette Davis

Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

, Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...

, James Dean

James Dean

James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...

, Miles Davis

Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

, Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes

Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. was an American songwriter, musician, singer and actor. Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the...

, Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...

, Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

, John Lennon

John Lennon

John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

, Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...

, and Mark Rydell

Mark Rydell

Mark Rydell is an American actor, film director and producer.-Career:Rydell's initial training was in music. As a youth, he wanted to be a conductor. He began his career as an actor and first became known for his role as Walt Johnson on The Edge of Night and as Jeff Baker on As the World Turns,...

.

Raw Foods

Lesa is an internationally-known raw foods chef and eco-entrepreneur. She created five raw food based businesses including three packaged foods lines sold through specialty grocery outlets such as Whole Foods

Whole foods

Whole foods are foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible, before being consumed. Whole foods typically do not contain added ingredients, such as salt, carbohydrates, or fat. Examples of whole foods include unpolished grains, beans, fruits, vegetables...

, a raw food delivery service called Seed Live Cuisine, and the Silverlake restaurant Jade Raw Fusion. She developed and currently operates Raw Body Bar, an exclusive, home delivery raw food pharmacy

Pharmacy

Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs...

 program.

Personal

She was born and raised in the mountains of Idaho and on Shoshoni Native American lands. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.

External links

• Lesa Carlson on IMDb
• Lesa Carlson on Myspace
• Evolution Into the Conscious Revolution on CD Baby
• Video of Lesa Carlson Live Improvisation at the LA Knitting Factory
• Lesa Carlson Acting Reel Streaming Video
• Sweet Revenge Entertainment Management Site
• Green Galactic Release for Evolution Into the Conscious Revolution

Media Links

• 'Raw Food Is No Oxymoron' Los Angeles Times February 17, 2002
• 'Au Naturel' Los Angeles Business Journal September 10, 2001

Sources

Carlson Residency, Music Connection, March 26, 2001-April 8, 2001

Raw Deal, Self Magazine, November 2002
God is in the Diet, W, April 2003
From LA: Raw Trends, Vogue, November 2003

(add: LA Weekly Culinary Review Sunset Magazine Backstage West)