We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Diana Studenberg. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Diana below.

Diana, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Happiness is a tricky word: I find it transient… what music and acting give me is fulfillment and definitely when I’m performing also moments of deep joy. It gets me up in the morning and motivates me and gives me purpose. I feel very lucky to have that… something I’m so passionate about. It drives my entire life and has driven every decision since.

And sometimes that’s tricky, I’ve moved countries and grown apart from friends and had breakups at times over always choosing the music and also evolution as a sort of mantra, but it’s really nice to have a place and outlet to pour all those experiences and emotions into.

And I think as a creative we still do work for others, or for something outside ourselves, whether that be for the story, for the song, or the director, studio etc. It’s just a different type of skill set than another industry which calls for their own skill sets and demands.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’d been in bands at this stage since I was 16 and didn’t slow down even while completing my studies. I balanced my engineering degree with a part time job and attended musical theatre school at night, dance classes, voice classes and band practice.

After graduating uni, while working in IT, I saw a map starting to form.. I could see what my whole life would look like if I stayed in that field, and it just wasn’t for me… I didn’t want to be alive for that version of reality actually, which I know sounds perhaps extreme, but that’s how I felt.

I quit my job and moved to the big city, Toronto, and started working with music producers and writing a lot both with collaborators and on my own. I’d met this one very inspiring producer/musician/songwriter, Moonhead, and we did a song together while he was still in Toronto.

I decided to record my full-length album with him and moved out to Vancouver which is where he’d relocated to. Upon presenting my songs, we both realized that it wasn’t a direction we wanted to go in. Instead, Moonhead had these really deep and melodic off-time signature tracks, and I really really loved them and felt this gravitational pull towards them. I started writing melodies and lyrics with him to those tracks and that became our band, Trope.

Since then, we’ve toured across Europe and the US with bands including The Pineapple Thief, Symphony X, Kings X and Haken. We’ve put out a debut album in 2021 which charted at #1 in the Bulgarian Rock charts and have toured in the US last year and headlined the Hard Rock Cafe. We’ll be releasing our sophomore album this year and embarking on another 25 date US tour in May supporting Soen with some Canadian dates and a few more dates supporting Kings X.

Working for so many years on my craft as a songwriter presented an amazing opportunity to co-write the theme song on the Netflix feature The Willoughbys, sung by Alessia Cara. The song itself ended up getting nominated for a Juno Award.

Acting is something a bit more recent. It’s a passion I developed about 5-6 years ago and started by taking classes, mostly. This past year was an active year which saw me acting in a couple of features one for a Network out in Toronto and booking a supporting recurring role in a TV series for TLN, as well as a national commercial and some other independent films/commercials.

I think what helped me become more aware of the role of an actor was working behind the camera and having producer assisted on several films including Tully [Jason Reitman, Charlize Theron] and Phil [Greg Kinnear], as well as worked in producing, post-production supervising, assistant editing, and music supervising, really instilled a deep appreciation for how collaborative this industry is. Something I feel at times the music industry can take a page from a bit more. In film, I feel that reality is very clearly understood that it’s an artform and craft attributable to the sum of its parts.

Currently I’m working on Trope’s sophomore double album DYAD, out for release this spring and am producing and music supervising a documentary feature that is funded by the CMF for a network, NTDTV.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think we all have it in us to be creative and in different ways. I don’t think that’s specific to people just in the arts or who choose the arts as a career. Though there is, I found in my experience, a misconception surrounding the amount of work that goes into this vocation and craft. And it is a vocation and craft.
I’ve worked way harder at being a songwriter over a longer period of time than I have at being a certified engineer who could make decisions that the safety of people’s lives depend on. That’s a weird thought to chew on..
I’ve seen some eyebrows raise regarding the not-stable nature of this career from those outside the industry or at times they won’t regard it as a ‘serious’ job.
The pandemic definitely helped point out how much we need entertainment and music and each job is within its lane of necessity and shouldn’t be judged.
If you’re providing a service, it’s a job. Acting and performing on a stage and entertaining an audience is a job.
And it doesn’t just start being a job when you’re astronomically famous across each corner of the world.
It also doesn’t have to be a job – it can be a hobby. Just like volunteering in different industries, it can be something that one chooses to do to pass the time or that helps them express themselves and it’s just something for them.
But it’s important not to negate entire industries just because that might not be something you would choose to commit to.
The artist’s career journey is a path of many no’s, lots of rejection, close calls, so it’s important to keep that in mind, these are long-term marathon type careers that don’t [often] expand overnight. They’re entrepreneurial and akin to building a business – there’s a lot of risk involved, and it often can take everything you’ve got. But I love it and I love the work, so that makes all those other challenges and uncertainties worth it for me.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I really had to unlearn the notion that a performance, or a song, or a scene had to be ‘good’. That my job was to be ‘good’ in any of those things. That really took a minute to unlearn and I think it’s an ongoing journey to be fully immersed in the moment to the point where you’re not thinking of anything outside of the scene you’re in or the song you’re performing. I think when I started realizing that focusing on whether I was doing a good job was a product of fear was when the lesson really started to hit home.

I’ve, in the past, struggled with stage fright when performing music live. In 2022, we were slated to go on tour in Europe and the first show was sold out and there was about 1000+ people in the audience. I remember before I went on stage, I realized… all those people had their own versions of a full day, or potentially even a long day. Many of them are dealing with their own obstacles. What’s more important? Given that we’re all going to die. Is it more important that I worry that my performance will be considered ‘good’ and thereby, perhaps unintentionally but still, impart fear on this crowd of people that maybe just want to either escape or be elevated by an experience or connect – or – pour all my focus on the music, on the crowd, on the energy imparted. I think the energy we share means a lot more and is more long lasting than this notion of ‘perfect’ which is a concept of the ego. Ego can be useful! But.. those moments on stage, I think those are reserved for something else.. for something more. Needless to say, that was one of the most fun shows I’ve played up until that point, when I realized it’s all about that energy exchange and the giving of it and just committing fully to the moment, versus holding anything back by trying to make it ‘good’.

Thank you very much for this interview!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.tropetheband.com/
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/dianastudenberg & http://www.instagram.com/tropeband
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tropeband & http://www.facebook.com/dianastudenberg
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tropeband
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TropeBand
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1dFOyNJR6px6zWvJVA8DIa?si=LjQ7imOLTmGKE1GV24yJeg Bandcamp: https://tropeband.bandcamp.com/album/eleutheromania

Image Credits
1st image: Joe Weller Next 2 black and white: Thom Kendall Both Live black and white profile shots: Lauren Jewell