Biography
Alisa Apreleva is an Oxford-based singer, composer and researcher. Born in the culturally diverse North Caucasus, she learned traditional singing from her kin and later studied folklore and linguistics at Moscow State University and composition at Berklee College of Music, where she also taught. She blends folk, jazz and contemporary chamber music, and explores repetition, ritual, embodiment and environments through acoustic, electronic and biosonic sound.
Alisa’s performances are often improvisatory and interactive, centred on human-to-human music sharing as a way of questioning the conventional invisible wall between performer and audience. She records and performs with musicians from many lands, and continues to learn from tradition bearers across cultures.
Her Lullaby Keeper project reintroduces the art and practice of traditional live lullaby singing into contemporary urban life. It explores the sensory and relational dimensions of the lullaby, including its role in co-regulation and belonging. It also raises a question: what happens to these human experiences when music can increasingly be streamed, personalised and generated by machines?
Alisa has worked extensively in arts and health to support vulnerable communities around the world and holds a PhD in music therapy.