Backstage at Joe's Pub, NYC (photo: Luis Ruiz)
Ellia Bisker is an award-winning songwriter, singer, and musician based in Brooklyn, NY whose work has earned comparisons to Amanda Palmer and Regina Spektor. In 2006 she began performing her songs about doomed love, bad women, works of literature, and existential mysteries as Sweet Soubrette (originally a solo act, later an 8-piece indie rock band, and often sizes in between), releasing four albums between 2008 and 2016.
In 2012 she formed macabre musical duo Charming Disaster with songwriter Jeff Morris. Charming Disaster, a collaborative songwriting and performance project, features tragicomic duets about love, death, crime, and the paranormal, and has been featured on the podcast Welcome To Night Vale. Charming Disaster's debut album, Love, Crime & Other Trouble was released in 2015, followed by Cautionary Tales in 2017 and SPELLS + RITUALS in 2019. The duo tours nationally and has garnered critical acclaim.
Ellia is also the lyricist and vocalist for Funkrust Brass Band, a 20-piece disco-punk brass band formed in 2014 with bandleader Phil Andrews. She is a longtime participant in the Bushwick Book Club, a book-inspired songwriting and performance series formed in 2009, and a regular contributor to literary performance series Necromancers of the Public Domain, She has also collaborated with circus artists to create two music/circus productions: The Flying Machine Factory Circus (with Circus Una in 2016) and The Cupcake Show (with Adam Kuchler in 2017).
She is a multi-year ASCAP Plus Award recipient in recognition of her songwriting. In 2015 she was awarded a Local Arts Support grant by the Brooklyn Arts Council. In 2016 Charming Disaster's song Right Words to Say, featured in the short film "Mary and Louise," was awarded "Best Ending Music" by the Garden State Film Festival. In 2016 and 2017 she was awarded artist residencies by Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology (Bellaire, MI).
She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two diabolical cats.