Elizabeth & The Catapult is a Brooklyn-based project by the American singer-songwriter Elizabeth Ziman. She is best known for her 2009 album ''Taller Children,'' produced by Mike Mogis and Dan Molad and released on

Verve Forecast Verve Forecast is a record label formed as a division of Verve Records to concentrate on pop, rock, and folk music. Founding Jerry Schoenbaum of Verve and Moe Asch of Folkways created Verve Folkways in 1964 to take advantage of the popularity ...

History

Ziman, who grew up in Greenwich Village, trained from youth as a classical pianist, writing her first songs on an upright piano at age 6. She attended the

Berklee College of Music Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level cours ...

on a scholarship to study classical composition, and was awarded the 2001

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

Leiber and Stoller scholarship for her song "Like Water is to Sand." Her original plans to pursue film scoring were changed in 2002 when

Patti Austin Patti Austin (born August 10, 1950) is an American R&B, pop, and jazz singer and songwriter. Music career Austin was born in Harlem, New York, to Gordon Austin, a jazz trombonist. She was raised in Bay Shore, New York on Long Island. Quincy ...

came to Berklee to recruit background vocalists for an Ella Fitzgerald tribute tour. Ziman toured with Austin for 18 months, causing her subsequent compositional style to draw heavily from jazz vocalists such as Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and

Sarah Vaughan Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer. Nicknamed "Sassy" and "Jazz royalty, The Divine One", she won two Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and was nominated for a total of nine ...

. She met Esperanza Spalding through the Patti Austin band and Spalding eventually played bass in Ziman's first band while still attending Berklee. Ziman met Lucius drummer and fellow student Dan Molad and Esperanza Spalding at a party during their final semester at Berklee, and they began performing together shortly afterward. Esperanza Spalding left the band soon after and Guitarist Pete Lalish (Lucius), another Berklee student, later joined the band after Ziman saw him performing at a Boston bar and invited him to collaborate. After Ziman and Molad completed their studies, the band moved to Brooklyn in early 2005. Using Molad's home studio, the band financed, recorded and produced an EP, ''Elizabeth & The Catapult'' in 2006. The band was the featured ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' Underground Artist for October 2006, and signed with Verve Records in 2008.

''Taller Children''

Having been popular on New York's Lower East Side, the band achieved a measure of national notoriety in the spring of 2009 with their first album under Verve, ''Taller Children.'' The band chose to travel to Omaha, Nebraska to record the album in the studio of Mike Mogis. Elizabeth wrote all the songs on the album with the exception of the Leonard Cohen cover "Everybody Knows," and several of the tracks were derived from demos recorded previously in Molad's home studio. The album was recorded quickly, and the band returned to New York shortly thereafter and released the album in June 2009.

''The Other Side of Zero''

In 2009, Ziman was commissioned by John Schaefer of NPR's Soundcheck to write a song cycle for a Lincoln Center show. Having gone through a band breakup, Ziman turned to Leonard Cohen's poetry collection ''

Book of Longing ''Book of Longing'' was the first new poetry book by Leonard Cohen since 1984's '' Book of Mercy''. First published in 2006 by McClelland and Stewart, ''Book of Longing'' contains 167 previously unpublished poems and drawings, mostly written a ...

.'' Ziman and Molad, now working as a duo, recorded demos for much of the new album, ''The Other Side of Zero,'' at Molad's father's home in Austin, Texas, before following their record label's suggestion of working with a producer. Molad suggested Tony Berg, and the band moved into the studio to complete the album. With the departure of Pete Lalish, guitar parts on the new album were covered by Berg and by

Blake Mills Blake Mills (born September 21, 1986) is an American songwriter, guitarist, producer, and composer based in California. Biography Blake Mills was born in Santa Monica, California, United States, and grew up in Malibu, where he attended Malib ...

. The title track features Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, who had visited the studio during recording and chose to participate after Ziman encouraged them to listen to the track. The album was released in October 2010.

''Like It Never Happened''

In 2014 she performed at Madison Square Garden opening for

Sara Bareilles Sara Beth Bareilles (, ; born December 7, 1979) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She has sold over three million albums and over 15 million singles in the United States. She has earned various awards and nominations including nin ...

and wrote music with

Ben Folds Benjamin Scott Folds (born September 12, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and composer, who is the first artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., since May 2017. Folds was th ...

. In 2014, ''Like it Never Happened'' was released by 30 Tigers and produced by Dan Molad, Peter Lalish and Paul Loren with string arrangements by Rob Moose. In 2015, ''Like it Never Happened'' was nominated for best album, best song, and best video by The 14th Annual Independent Music Awards and "Someday Soon" won the award in the "Folk/Singer-Songwriter Song" category.

''Keepsake''

''Keepsake'', the fourth album from Elizabeth & the Catapult and the first on Compass Records, was released on October 20, 2017. It was produced by Dan Molad, Richard Swift and Elizabeth Ziman.

''sincerely, e''

On December 8, 2020, Elizabeth and the Catapult announced their fifth studio album ''sincerely, e'' on Flood Magazine, as well as sharing an early preview of the first single "pop the placebo". The album was entirely recorded and inspired during the ongoing quarantine of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was released on March 5, 2021 via Compass Records.

References

External links

Elizabeth and the Catapult's Official WebsiteElizabeth and the Catapult make an appearance on
Radio Happy Hour {{DEFAULTSORT:Elizabeth and The Catapult Musical groups established in 2004 Indie pop groups from New York (state) Thirty Tigers artists