We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tony Correlli a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Tony thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
We spend so much of our lifetimes at “work”, so the real metric for success should be how enjoyable and fulfilling that time is to use individually and internally, regardless of money, titles, and all that external stuff. I’m very lucky to have found something I love doing, and I have done well in my field because I enjoy it and have immersed myself in it. I don’t know if I’d do well in another job, I don’t know if I’d have the same passion that I have for producing music, and really I don’t want to find out. I want to spend my waking hours collaborating with diverse musicians and creating new music and sounds as long as I am able.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a producer working in the Baltimore area in genres as diverse as this city. I team up with musicians and songwriters to help develop the songs from their minds onto a shareable medium for the world to hear. We meet at my studio, The Deep End, which is full of instruments and the gear I use to accomplish that. Ultimately, it’s about writing good songs and making sure the musical parts and tones support the song and create something worth listening to. That’s the job, and that’s what I strive to do to the best of my ability. I have a studio, but I don’t have multiple engineers, I don’t rent out the room, it’s really just the place we create together. I work hard to make sure everything is cutting edge and the instruments are ready to go and we can flow with whatever genre or idea the artist wants to explore. So I need the facility, the gear, but most importantly the musical vocabulary, ability, and vision to help make dreams a reality for the artists who have entrusted me with their creations.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
If you enjoy art, support artists! If you only remember one thing you read today, I hope it’s that. If you value something, please pay for it in some way to help maintain it. Musicians dive into creating and spend so much money on gear and recording and the even pay just to promote their songs in the hope that people will enjoy what they’ve created. If you respect that effort, please help chip in toward those costs by purchasing their album or other merch to help offset their costs. That’s literally hundreds of times more valuable than paying for a streaming service that only passes along fractions of pennies to the content creators. Your local music scene needs supporters to make it work and give bands the opportunity to grow. Without that, we’re discouraging artists from creating and we may see this trend negatively impact quality throughout all of the arts and journalism and so many other fields. If you can’t buy it, share it, spread the word, and tell and the artist that you like what they’ve made. That really helps encourage creativity, and that small act of kindness will mean so much to the musicians I know who pour their hearts into their music.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The coolest thing about recorded music is that it can reach so many people regardless of their place and time. Music I’ve written has been heard by people I’ll never meet, and that music will last long after I’m gone. I love listening to jazz pianist Bill Evans and so many artists that came and left before my time. Before their time, recording wasn’t even possible! We only have sheet music from composers, and we’ll never get to hear the talented violinists and vocalists from the pre-recorded era. Their beautiful performances are lost like so many fireside stories that dissolved into the night sky without being written down. We’re all so lucky to be born at a time when we can enjoy and experience so much art from around the world and across the centuries. I’m lucky to be a part of creating and chronicling audio art.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://thedeependstudio.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedeependstudio/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedeependstudio/
- Youtube: https://www.facebook.com/thedeependstudio/