We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elena Maro a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elena, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

As a freelancing woman composer, who moved on her own from Italy to the USA to start afresh in a male dominated and very competitive industry, and a former educator of 21 years, it is my choice to focus on Film and Television productions that highlight social issues and promote equality. Those stories that inspire, educate and empower are the meaningful projects I love writing music for.
I believe that entertainment is a formidable tool and it can make the difference in people’s life, opening minds, igniting ideas and passions and much more.
From what I see and what I hear from fellow filmmakers, there is still much work to do to change the way women are perceived in the industry, both in front and behind the camera and so I never say no when a project supports that.
I can see the change is slowly happening, but we need to keep on going and doing.

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 was born in Turin, Piedmont, Italy and grew up in a little town in the suburbs. When I was a kid there wasn’t Internet and there weren’t many places to go or things to do in my town, so I spent my time between school and home, where I loved being in the garden and I often sat on a cherry three reading a book; and then there were my favorite: my ballet classes.
On Sundays, the day of rest, it was the time to watch old Hollywood movies with my mum.
With motion picture it was love at first sight!
Of those films I remember being mesmerized by the visuals and the stories, but, to me, it was in the music where the magic was happening: the songs, the choreographies, the orchestral scores made me dream that, one day, I would leave that small country town to go to Hollywood and make music for the silver screen.

I literally worked 21 years planning to move to Los Angeles and make film scoring my full time job and in September 2016, with two bags and the thought: “Oh My, I am actually doing it!”, I flew to Los Angeles.
It is the best decision I have ever made.
I am still in Los Angeles and I am a full time active composer, I am now a Television Academy Voting Member (Emmy Awards®) and my music can be heard on Television, on all the major streaming platforms and in theaters worldwide and even, this year, in an Academy Award® nominated film.
The focal point of my work is the collaboration with Directors: listening to their vision for the film and analyzing in details the story and the psychological arc of each character, so that I can write music that not only accompanies and enhances the narrative, but becomes a unique and essential part of it, just like another character.
While scoring a film I am in continue communication with my clients. My job is 50 per cent making music in my own studio and 50 per cent collaborating with the client which means following their notes and getting feedback.
As a composer I am always committed to be a positive, reassuring, enthusiastic, highly efficient and competent part of the post production team.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My main goal is to stay balanced, healthy and thus creative, and to continue to write music for films that carry important messages like some of my recent works. The Oscar nominated film “Tell It Like A Woman”, which comes from an amazing idea of producer Chiara Tilesi, founder of We Do It Together (a film production company empowering women through film, art and media), is a seven episodes anthology feature film ( I scored the closing episode, “Aria”) written and directed by women, about women and for everyone.
“Borrowed Plumes” by writer-director Ritu Singh Pande, is the beautiful life journey of an immigrant woman, Mita, and tells us about her courage of digging deep into herself and letting her true self finally shine, something that is really hard to do when the social environment ‘suggests’ all the time that we must conform and looks at us through stereotypes.
“Cuore Segreto”, an Italian film that I completed this year, directed by Alessio Bertoli and produced by AIDO (Italian Association for Organ Donations) narrates the sweet and touching story of two young men, and its mission is to inform and educate about how organ donations can save many lives.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Making music for visual media is a very specific kind of composing, because you are not writing for yourself, but your talent, skills and inspiration are serving the story and the director vision. Creating music for the screen is a collaborative process where you work hand in hand with the director and are inspired and guided by what you see on screen, which is the result of the work of so many people in front and behind the camera, each one of those leaving their “stamp”, so it is important for you to have empathy and a refined sense of understanding of the human nature to be able to create a soundtrack that will not only accompany the narration, but that will become coherent part of the story. Every Collaboration is a valuable learning experience both on a professional and on a personal point of view and this makes it really rewarding.
Furthermore, the moment you perceive the emotional reactions from the audience in the exact points where you intended them to happen while composing is fulfilling.
If your music touches people, then you are sure the message of the story is delivered and that single moment of realization is worth all the effort and hard work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.elenamaro.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elenamaromusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elenamaromusic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenamaro
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/elenamaromusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@elenamaromusic
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5TozwIUTrxWe5UlI71qxAC https://music.apple.com/us/artist/elena-maro/1540218616

Image Credits
Adrienne Alivia Photography,  Dayana Marconi Image, Stefano La Bruna.