Elisa Faires has been singing since she was eight years old. Her early beginnings were rooted in choral singing, and in college she studied opera and classical music as well as electronic music. After studying at the University she spent three years dedicated to her study and singing in Opera and began to pursue a career. In fact, one of her teachers was the great Dr. Robert Moog. As a reaction to the her rigorous training in technique and repertoire, she began improvisation with others and started recording and performing her own experimental music. After having many auditions and classical concerts she decided the conventional Opera scene was not where she wanted to be. She went on to Bali Indonesia to study Classical Balinese gamelan and to experience the culture that surrounds the music in 2001 and again in 2020 under the teaching of Salukat Gamelan Leader and Composer, Dewa Alit. Since then she has performed and recorded with several different projects such as Paw of Zing, Imaginary Numbers, XAMBUCA, Hans Joachim Roedelius, Void Ensemble, Quartet Pounder, Night Wasp, Ivan Seng and with Meg Mulhearn in their collaborative project Spectral Habitat. She has led many improvisational workshops and groups in creative music and sound over the years. For the past 10 years she has been experimenting with vocals and harmonies using multi tracking, loops, effects, modular synthesis and other electronics. She previously has presented sound installations and interacted live in her pieces entitled Photosynthesis and another Dialoga Aquila for The Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center’s annual ReHappening festival. She was awarded a grant in 2007 from Met Life for their Meet the Composer grant.

She additionally composes music for Butoh dance, motion sculpture and performance art. She composed and performed with various dance groups including Butoh Legacy Asheville, Anemone Dance Theater and Cilla Vee Life Arts. Elisa continues to work with dance organizations and has continued to do so for over 10 years.

Touring live as a solo artist since 2012, she has performed in various countries including in Lunz Austria (at More Ohr Less Festival put on by Hans Joachim Roedelius), Berlin, Budapest and has toured extensively throughout the United States.

Traditionally recording and performing music for most of her life with others in various projects, Elisa completed her debut solo album, Elixir No .444, in 2012. Her second album, Photosynthesis, was released in 2014 on the Erototox Decodings record label. In 2020 Spectral Habitat featuring Elisa Faires and Meg Mulhearm released Atlas on Verses Records. In September 2020, Elisa Faires in a collaboration with her husband Chandra Shukla (XAMBUCA) released Tied Tide Beneath The Sky, which is music she and Shukla were asked to compose for a wedding. She continues to record and write music and has plans to release more music solo, with IvanSeng and XAMBUCA in 2021.

In November 2020, Elisa Faires was a first draft resident in a two month residency at Revolve in Asheville, NC. In this residency, she facilitated a laboratory of exploring sonic and visual manifestations of transmutation and alchemy.