We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Victoria Martonne a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Victoria , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
At a young age I knew I wanted to be a performer, so I prepped for my career my whole life basically. Back in school I was in drama club, choir and band. I started taking guitar lessons at 14 years old because I wanted to be able to write my own songs. After graduating from high school I attended a performing arts college where I got my BFA in Acting and the training I acquired throughout this journey was fundamental for my career. Studying the craft is very important just like in any other profession; You need to know the rules to be able to break them and make things your own, and training will give you the confidence to do so and explore. I also believe that as an artist the craft doesn’t come just from books but from personal experience. Art is something meant to be felt and rarely it is rationalized, for this reason when I refer to training, I am referring to techniques that can act synergistically with personal experience, supporting each other in a way that will make the performance stronger and sustainable (specially if it’s performance you will have to do many times). As a singer, learning the craft is also crucial for my progress. My voice requires training and technique in other for me to have enough knowledge on how to use it that I am able to freely explore.
Victoria , 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 am originally from Brazil and I moved to Los Angeles to study acting. After working on a film that I was asked to write a song for, I was very surprised with the results. I have been writing songs since I was a kid, but I never planned on releasing them. However, after this experience and the audience’s reaction (I won best original song in a couple of festivals), I chose to follow my passion for music as well. In 2022 I released my first EP, Stages of a Platonic Relationsh*t along with a music video for the song “Count Them Down” that was selected for the The Breck Film Festival in Colorado. Now I am working on my new album which the mane is still TBD. However, the mood for this one is some alone time during dusk in a summer evening, a little bit of summer blues.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is when people connect to your work. I absolutely love when my friends tell me they cried, laughed, danced to my song or that it resonates with them. That is make inspires me to share my creations with world, the feedback I get from the audience and how it makes them feel.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
I think that anyone with a non-creative career might have a hard time understanding why we do what we do, specially when most times you are paying to work and not the other way around. I think artists are more sensitive to their feelings and either need the connection to feel seen and understood or need to let them out in some way (or both). The vulnerable positions we put our selves in are usually very uncomfortable but for some reason it is how we heal and grow as human beings. Like a doctor who wishes to cure people and ease pain, we hope to do the same but through abstract ways. What we do is not necessarily tangible, but it connects us to one another evoking a feeling of belonging.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @vicmartonne
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@VictoriaMartonne
- Other: Apple Music & Spotify: Victoria Martonne