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

Joi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I was very young, maybe 11 or 12, when I started working in theatre as a performer. For me, it was much more about the process and the community than it was about being on stage. I fell in love with the environment of having this quirky group of misfit people all come together for a few months and inject their souls into the same story while being led by a fearless director or choreographer. I was hooked immediately and I never questioned it – I knew this was the world I would live in. After many years of performing, I made the switch to composition and scoring and all of the aspects that I loved about theatre came into focus in a way that I never could have imagined I was capable of, not to mention I just felt so much better at it.

Joi, 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?

I started my career in professional theatre – mainly as a vocalist – and toured with Cirque Du Soleil, a few different cruise lines, and was a songwriter and vocalist in New York City before making the switch to media composition. My main work now is scoring for film and theatre, and I still do studio vocal work. Having a background on the stage, memorizing and reading scripts, and working with directors as a performer is so embedded in my work now as a composer – it really puts the characters and the underlying emotions at the front of my brain when I’m writing music. It was instilled in my that every tiny detail and choice should have a purpose in supporting the story and the vision of the director. I also have a film scoring partner that I work with for all things visual media, Cory Todd. It’s great working with a collaborative partner—especially since we’re both just endlessly geeking out over music and film, and so we end up never saying no to any crazy idea that pops into one of our heads. We just get really excited about the work no matter what the project is. We will buy a new instrument or hire session players for the day even if it is for a pitch demo. We both have such different backgrounds in music and technology and how we got into composition that our distinct perspectives always add more to whatever we are making and we are able to fill in the blanks for each other. One of the projects that I am extremely proud of was creating the additional composition and sound design for the Off-Broadway show “Ain’t Done Bad” at the Signature Theatre in New York.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn impatience in my career and in my life in general. I was always very ambitious and impatient with that ambition. In most of my twenties, I sought out the next gig or career move with a rushed sense of urgency that wasn’t always helping me. I think finding patience is a constant learning process, but I finally understand that I am exactly where I am supposed to be and there is a lot of freedom in that lesson. It gives me the freedom to create without restraint or fear and brings a lot of clarity. It is also so easy to compare ourselves to other people’s lives and careers, especially with social media. But as soon I was able to create patience for myself and recognize that these tiny seeds that I had planted years ago, whether it be friendships, colleagues, or both, are just now starting to bloom, I found the comparisons turning into celebrations of my friends and colleagues successes. Knowing how to access your inner patience also gives people around you a sense of ease and trust, which is a great way to be – especially when you’re working on an intense project with tight deadlines.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of being an artist is the ability to bring empathy into a space. Every aspect of creating involves collaboration, and I think the most successful art comes from a baseline of empathy. And then, the result is that we get to bring a new or forgotten story into the world and maybe even change someone’s mind or at least show them a point of view they had never thought of before. Artists and creatives have the ability to let someone escape their reality for a few minutes or hours and maybe even walk out of that experience different than how they walked in. To be a part of that feels deeply human, even when the day-to-day work is rarely this existential event, when I zoom out I am really grateful and lucky to be a part of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.joimarchetti.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joiolympiamusic/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joi-marchetti-3ab509124

Image Credits

Andrew Parsons