Weba Garretson began her career in Los Angeles as the lead singer of the new wave band "The Pearls" who provided original songs for Ann Jellico's "The Sport of My Mad Mother" directed by David Schweizer. She went on to work with Schweizer, Philip Littell and Jerry Frankel on "The Weba Show" an avant garde cabaret act that ran for over two years at the Lhasa Club, with special appearances at the Kool Jazz Festival, the Olympic Arts Festival and National TV. At the same time, she also appeared in many works by performance artist Donald Krieger including "Magic Radio," "Boys Life" and "North." From 1989-99 she toured with the performance art group the SHRIMPS, writing songs and original compositions in collaboration with Pearls guitarist Steve Stewart
and Mark Wheaton. In 1990, they wrote LOOKS, which premiered at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. In 1992, Garretson & Stewart were commissioned by MOCA to write and produce "Humans Making Love As Gods" a radio piece for MOCA's Territory of Art Series for American Public Radio. From 1993-97, she performed spoken word narratives with improvised musical settings, collaborating with a diverse group of musicians led guitarist Joe Baiza and bassist Ralph Gorodetsky. She recorded two CD's with Baiza and Gorodetsky -- "Welcome to Webaworld" (Catasonic) and "Puttanesca" (unreleased). In 1998, she was invited to perform in the playwright Bertolt Brecht's West Coast Centennial Festival and assembled the Eastside Sinfonietta with Joe Berardi, Jason Payne, Tracy Wannomae and Ralph Gorodetsky to create contemporary arrangements of classic songs from the Weimar Republic. After two successful concerts at the Central Library, the Sinfonietta was asked by the Goethe Institute and MOCA to participate in a new production of the Brecht/Weill musical "Happy End" at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary for the Weill Centennial in 2000. "Happy End" included films created by Frederik Nilsen and Daniel Marlos and featured Weba Garretson in the lead role of Lillian Holiday. Video artist Bill Viola saw Weba in "Happy End" and invited her to work on his Passions Series. She collaborated with Viola on "Catherine's Room" a video installation that has been presented at the Getty Museum and the National Gallery of London. A CD of Weill/Brecht songs arranged and performed by the Eastside Sinfonietta was on True Classical CDs in the Spring of 2003.

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