We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily Dukes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Emily , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
In the past few years I’ve started a project I’m particularly passionate about with Noé Zagroun, a phenomenal French producer and pianist I met while studying at Berklee College of Music. We’ve been writing and releasing songs and the latest came out at the end of June. It’s an indie-pop song called “Head Down” and it’s inspired by the story of a 50s housewife stuck in her marriage with a careless husband. Even though we released a few songs before this one, we really felt that Head Down had all the characteristics of what we would like our musical identity to be and we even decided to shoot our first music video for it. The video came out in July and making it was an incredible experience. We got the chance to work with a team of super young, passionate and talented people and we’re truly proud of the final result! It was a super special and challenging experience for me because not only was it the first music video I ever got to do but I was also the main actress, which was both stressful and incredibly fun. If anyone reading this is interested, the song is streaming on all platforms and the music video is on my YouTube channel : @EmilyDukesMusic
Emily , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Emily Dukes and I’ve been doing music my whole life. I started playing piano when I was a little kid and after a few years I convinced my parents to make me take violin lessons. I was very serious about violin for a very long time and I studied at the Conservatory of Milano for almost ten years. Ever since childhood I developed a huge passion for writing and singing as well and it eventually turned into my biggest love. At 18 I auditioned for Berklee College of Music and got in with a scholarship for violin and composition and I graduated in 2019 majoring in Film Scoring. I then moved to LA for a year and after lots of really cool experiences I moved back to Italy because of Covid. In 2022 I moved to Paris, where I’ve been working mostly as a top liner and vocalist for different sync companies and where I started my duo project with the phenomenally talented French producer Noé Zagroun. I’ve always loved keeping my horizons broad and, though at times it’s been tough keeping up with all these different things I do and choosing what I loved the most, it’s also been my greatest asset and I feel very lucky to have had parents who not only have supported my choices but have encouraged them. Right now my greatest focus is my duo project and I’m hoping that with time it’ll grow and get more attention!
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Personally as someone who’s always struggled to open up in real life, having an emotional outlet as big as music is what has truly saved me from going insane in most occasions of my life. Being able to bring out your most intimate and difficult feelings and being able to reach even just one person who can relate to those feelings and find confort in your art is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist. It’s great to know that those things that were maybe so hard to share and talk about are now being heard by someone who’s had a similar experience and that will benefit from knowing they’re not alone and that to me is the real magic.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I feel extremely grateful that I had the opportunity to pursue my passions and that I was really supported by my family and friends but it’s never easy. Being an artist is not an easy choice and music is not a easy career path. There are a lot of ups and downs and a lot of instances where it can get so disappointing and frustrating and the thought of quitting can be very tempting. It’s tough when you work on something for months, even years and you put your savings into something you really believe in and then no one really cares. It’s tough when you spend a life trying to perfect your technical skills and there’s always someone who’s better than you. But at the same time the real strength of an artist is to not allow these things to destroy your confidence and your dreams and personally I think through the years I’ve done a decent job at trying to block those negative thoughts and feelings out in order to continue pursuing what I love doing the most. I’m surrounded by insanely talented people that go through the same struggles and it breaks my heart when I see someone giving up. And of course sometimes there are some instances in life that force us to take heart breaking decisions but personally I don’t think I could do anything else other than music and I hope I’ll never lose my resilience.
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