LISA MOLINARO

Lisa Molinaro introduces her stellar debut solo record, Blind Trust

Lisa Molinaro builds worlds out of sound — part orchestral, part electric, all her own. A classically trained violist with a punk rock backbone, she’s spent years inside Modest Mouse and countless studios before turning fully toward her own sonic language.

Molinaro writes, performs, and records nearly everything herself: viola, piano, bass, analog synths, and voice. The result is music that feels handmade and cinematic — where strings collide with distortion, and melody threads through controlled chaos.

Her work doesn’t bend genres; it abandons them. Every song is a new invention, a translation of a life lived between orchestra pits and rock clubs, film scores and late-night experiments — a sound that could only belong to her.

Tap to listen

Lisa Molinaro is a composer, violist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose work moves fluidly between orchestral composition, experimental pop, and art-driven rock. A classically trained violist with roots in punk and hardcore, Molinaro has built a career defined by range, authorship, and sonic precision.

For more than a decade, she was half of Talkdemonic, helping shape the duo’s loop-based chamber sound into a critically recognized project known for its cinematic depth and technical sophistication. She later joined Modest Mouse as both a touring member and studio contributor, performing viola and vocals on major stages worldwide and contributing to recordings within the band’s expansive catalog.

Alongside her performance career, Molinaro has become a sought-after recording artist and arranger, contributing strings and vocals across numerous projects. She writes, performs, and records nearly all of her solo material herself — viola, piano, bass, analog synths, and voice — crafting work that reflects both compositional discipline and raw immediacy.

In 2024, she composed her debut feature film score for Raging Midlife, expanding her orchestral language into long-form narrative and demonstrating her command of emotional architecture across mediums. The score further established her as a composer capable of bridging songcraft and cinematic composition with equal authority.

As a solo artist, Molinaro is not interested in genre alignment. Her work draws from chamber music, experimental electronics, post-punk energy, and film scoring — but ultimately operates within a sonic framework she has developed herself. Her vocals remain intimate and restrained, yet capable of calculated force when necessary, mirroring the dynamic control present in her arrangements.

After years contributing to landmark projects and collaborative works, Lisa Molinaro is now defining a singular body of music under her own name — expansive, intentional, and unmistakably hers.