The poet came before the music.
The recording artist is not a character invented to front a catalog. The name, the words and the philosophy came first. The music grew from them.
I set out to create a visual character for Lioness Zen. None of the ones I created felt quite right. Then I decided to use a selfie as the reference image.
That’s when something unexpected happened.
The image that came back actually looked like me, not as I am now, but as I was around the time these poems were written. It felt less like inventing someone and more like meeting a part of myself I had left behind.
I recognized her.
And then:
She recognized me back.
Somewhere in that recognition, the poet began writing again...
Before she sang, she wrote.
Lioness Zen began as a pen name for poems and reflections. The writing was intimate, observant and emotionally direct, interested in what people reveal, what they hide, what hurts, and what remains worth believing in.
Years later, some of those poems began to ask for something more than the page could give them. Melody, phrasing, rhythm and voice opened another way into the same emotional territory.
A note from the poet
I caught the writing bug when I was young. In second grade, my teacher told my Mom I had a gift for allegory. My Mom smiled, so I figured allegory was a good thing. I kept writing, and years later, one poem set to music became the beginning of my musical journey as Lioness Zen.
Throughout my adult life, many a love interest became the recipient of my pointed prose, especially when we were in the last gasps of a relationship. But poetry was a whole different word game, or so I thought.
Then came a chance encounter online with an incredibly exciting man named Xeno. I was entranced by his ability to instantaneously write poetic lines. Before long, I began, tenuously at first, to answer him in kind, much to his surprise and ultimately his chagrin.
My first poem, Who Am I?, was written for him. Decades later, it became the first Lioness Zen release.
Hopeful without being naive.
Lioness Zen is not about pretending darkness does not exist. It is about seeing it clearly and deciding that it does not get the final word. Strength does not have to become hardness. Reflection does not require gloom. Joy, tenderness, humor and steel can all belong to the same woman.
From the page to
a world of her own.
Personal at the center.
My initial artist discography is rooted entirely in my own writing. The songs I am releasing first began as poems I wrote, sometimes years before they ever became music. Bringing those words into song is at the heart of how Lioness Zen began as a recording artist.
Modern AI-assisted creative tools help shape arrangements and production, but the emotional center remains personal: the perspective, the voice, and the choices that turn an idea into a finished song.
As my catalog grows, I also plan to expand into songs that may begin with ideas, phrases or draft material developed with AI-assisted creative tools and then be revised, rewritten and transformed through my own creative process.
Whether a song begins with one of my poems or with a collaborative starting point, the finished work is shaped by my perspective, my voice and my choices, what I keep, change, discard, emphasize and ultimately make my own.
If this feels like your kind of music, the Lioness Zen Experience is made for you.
The poems found their music.
Today, Lioness Zen lives in Smooth Jazz and Adult Contemporary, music for grown-up hearts that can ache softly, laugh, remember, desire, question and begin again.
The songs are not meant to overwhelm the listener. They invite you in. Some are joyful. Some sit quietly in the dark. All are rooted in the words.
Meet the speaking voice
Lioness Zen began with my words, but the voice you hear is also mine. The speaking voice, the singing voice and the point of view all come from the same place. The tools may be modern. But the center, the heart, of my music is deeply personal. I think, and I hope, that authenticity shines through in my music and connects with you and with your own experiences.