Andrea Lisa

South Africa, New Zealand, and a degree in jazz guitar

Andréa Lisa was born in South Africa and raised in New Zealand, and the two halves of that upbringing are usually the first thing written about her. Soul, jazz and R&B were what she heard growing up; by fifteen she was writing her own material rather than learning other people's. The formal part came later, at the New Zealand School of Music, where she majored in jazz guitar and vocals — an unusual double that explains why she is billed, consistently and accurately, as a vocalist and guitarist rather than a singer with a band.

The working version of that act took shape in New Zealand in mid-2011, when she put together a group playing soul, crossover jazz and R&B. The first recorded evidence is the EP So Sweet, released in 2012. What followed was not a quick ascent. Eight years separate So Sweet from the next release under her own name, the 2019 single Meet Me Again, and those years were spent largely in other people's bands.

The sideman decade

The credits she accumulated in that period are the reason promoters book her now. She played guitar on Kool & the Gang's album People Just Wanna Have Fun, and appears on the tracks Obsession and For the Woman in You. She has worked with Jonathan Butler and with Ralph Johnson of Earth, Wind & Fire — a collaboration that, by her own account, drew a Hollywood Music in Media Awards nomination in November 2019.

The most consequential of these relationships was with the saxophonist Kirk Whalum. She toured with him in the United States, appears as a featured artist on his albums Epic Cool and Humanité, and contributed the original songs Love and Healing and Get Your Wings Up. The touring was repetitive in the useful sense: she came through the same venues year after year as part of Whalum's band, and in at least one case — Middle C Jazz in Charlotte, North Carolina — the room noticed the guitarist standing to one side and later booked her in her own right. That is a fair description of how she entered the American circuit: not through a breakout record, but through rooms that had already watched her work.

Singles first, then the album

Her solo catalogue was built one single at a time. Bloom arrived in 2022, then three in 2023 — Vortex, Golden Hour and Like Each Other. Vortex did the heavy lifting on radio, picking up airplay on Billboard-reporting stations, SiriusXM's Watercolors channel and iHeart. Like Each Other, released on 8 August 2023, was described on release as a slow burner, calm but with a steady pulse underneath, which is a reasonable summary of her default mode: mid-tempo, guitar-led, the vocal carrying the melody rather than decorating it. At the time it came out she was playing the Māngere Arts Centre in Auckland on 18 August before leaving for the Whalum tour — a neat snapshot of the two-track career she was running.

The full-length followed in 2024: Silver Lining, which gathered the earlier singles alongside Tribe, Calvert Street, Finish Line, Chocolates in Heaven and All the Way. She has described it as a melodic diary of lessons learned, and the sequencing bears that out — it reads as a collected run of singles rather than a concept. Some venue copy still describes her 2023 output as a debut album called Vortex; the discography does not support that. Vortex was a single, and Silver Lining, in 2024, is the album.

Since then she has appeared as a guest on other people's records — Love & Healing on Whalum's Epic Cool in 2024, Feels So Good on The Legacy Project in 2025 — and released one track of her own. Feelin' Free came out on 30 January 2026, a collaboration with the San Diego vocalist Rebecca Jade, and it is the most recent thing with her name on it as of October 2026.

Where she stands in October 2026

2026 has been the busiest year of her career and almost all of it has been festival and cruise work rather than a conventional headline tour. The calendar opened on 14 February with a Church Street Jazz Series date at the Attucks Theatre in Norfolk, Virginia, an 8pm show that went on sale through Ticketmaster. Then came Dave Koz & Friends at Sea from 22 to 30 March, sailing Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina; Soundscapes at the Knoxville Museum of Art on 10 April; the Sweet Wine & Jazz Festival in Dulles, Virginia, the following day; the Cancún Jazz Festival spring edition from 15 to 17 May; and Spaghettini in Seal Beach on 22 May.

The summer ran at the same rate: Brian Culbertson's Jazz Getaway in Napa Valley on 10 and 11 June, the San Diego Smooth Jazz Festival on 13 June, Marine View Live in Seattle on 14 June, the Velvet Nights Series in Tulsa on 26 June. July and August were given over largely to the Rebecca Jade pairing — St James Live in Atlanta on 9 July, Middle C Jazz on 15 July, the Greater Hartford Jazz Festival on 18 July — before the Thornton Winery series in Temecula on 1 August, South Jazz Kitchen in Philadelphia on 13 August, the First Coast Smooth Jazz Festival in Jacksonville on 15 August and the Aloha Jazz Festival in Honolulu from 20 to 24 August.

September closed with the Destination Smooth Jazz Series in Louisville on the 5th, a Hyatt concert in Newport Beach on the 11th, the West Coast Jazz Cruise from 18 to 25 September and the Elk Grove Fall Jazz Festival in Sacramento on the 26th, where the local promoter's reaction to her set was posted as simply phenomenal. October has already taken in the Barbados Jazz Excursion & Golf Weekend from the 8th to the 12th and the Catalina Island JazzTrax Festival in Avalon on the 16th.

What is still to come, and what a set looks like

Three forward billings are on sale. Serente Jazz & Wine Escapes in Las Vegas on 29 October comes first. Then, on 5 November, the one that matters most to her: a headline show at The Tuning Fork in Auckland, her first New Zealand date in some time, advertised as a one-off and billed as coming direct from Los Angeles. Doors are at 6.30pm for a 7.30pm start, general admission is unreserved at NZ$85, and a VIP ticket adds a twenty-minute pre-show meet-and-greet with the band, a glass of champagne and a box of chocolates named after a Silver Lining track.

After that she rejoins the ensemble circuit. December is spread across Mindi Abair's I Can't Wait for Christmas tour, with her name on dates from the 2nd to the 22nd alongside Rebecca Jade and the other featured players, and the year ends on 30 December at Rick Braun's New Year's Eve show in Orlando.

The shape of a performance depends entirely on which of those contexts it is. On a festival bill or a cruise she plays a single set inside a multi-artist afternoon or evening — the Catalina slot was a 7pm billing in the Avalon Ballroom. With Rebecca Jade she works as a two-voice front line, Lisa on guitar, the pair trading leads over a rhythm section; Feelin' Free came out of that partnership and is now the thing the duo shows are sold on. The Auckland date is the exception and the test: a full evening under her own name, with her own band, in the country where she started.