Kuma Lisa has recently grown from a songwriting duo into a four-piece band, featuring vocals tinged with lyrical piano, jazz and folk-rock influences, with Bulgarian roots. Formed in Walthamstow, London, with original members from the Netherlands (Rob Stutterheim) and Bulgaria (Mariana Bogdanova), the band now play with UK-born double bassist Julia Doyle and drummer Peter Udall.
In 2012, the band appeared live on BBC London with Simon Lederman and in 2013 played on BBC6 Music’s ‘Tom Robinson Introducing’ with Dance of the Fly (mixtape Fresh on the Net). In 2014 the debut album Kuma Lisa was launched at the Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston. Other locations have included St Moritz Club Soho, The Troubadour, the Library in Islington, and St Mary’s Church Walthamstow.
Following a four-year break where life temporarily took us to different locations, the band reformed in 2019, and released the single All the Luck in 2021. In October 2023, a folk-rock collaboration between Kuma Lisa and friends led to the release of four-track EP Furniture Talkback.
Their latest EP Birds in Wells is a moody dream scape of energies, moving through themes of surrealist contemplation of pressures to perform in life (Working at the Circus), disillusionment and coping with being let down (Promised You a Diamond) and visions of landscapes for human effort (Sand Sea).
Recorded at Studio45 in London and mastered at Camden Records, the three-track EP will be released 31 January 2024.
Doors open 1900, music starts 1930. There will be pizzas!