Catherine Joy, the talented, award-winning film composer of ROAD TO EVERYWHERE, talks with Michael about her experiences growing up in Tasmania and her journey to being a successful film composer in Hollywood.
Catherine Joy - Composer of ROAD TO EVERYWHERE
Catherine, you have a fascinating background. It's not every day that we meet a composer from Tasmania. Talk, if you will, about where you grew up and your early experiences with your family.
I was born in Hobart, Tasmania and spent a lot of my youth growing up there. My mum is a concert pianist so music was always front and center in my life. I started violin at 4 years old, along with training as a classical singer. When I was 5 my parents decided to become missionaries. So that led to us traveling the world for a number of years. Music was always the leading way to communicate with people of different cultures we encountered throughout that time. Then we moved back to Tasmania when I was 10, and during the rest of my schooling I focused heavily on developing my musical skills.
Catherine and family on the move
I know your family's musical background was a major influence, could you tell us what started your interest in music?
My parents have always wanted me to follow in my mum’s footsteps of being a professional musician and I was definitely good with that. While my siblings were also wonderful young musicians they were more interested in academic pursuits (my brother receiving his PhD in Political Science and Ethics, my sister in Computational Chemistry). My destiny was music. I have quit music twice over the years because it is a really challenging career path, and there are periods of doubt and frustration. While I did well in the 9-5 world during those periods, I never found it close to fulfilling and I always returned to music. My parents, unlike the stereotype, were always sad when I got a “real job” and thrilled when I returned to a life of music.
Did you begin as a young performer or were you always composing?
I was a performer in my youth, both as a violinist and a singer. I didn’t realize that composing was one of the “jobs” you could have in music. I see now looking back that I was always desperate to get off the page of what was already written. This led me to improvisation, and leaving the classical world and focusing on jazz was the door to composition for me.
Three generations at the piano: Catherine Joy, her niece Jessica and mother concert pianist Roslyn Joy Langlois.
When did you began to feel that music could be a career path for you?
Always. But it took me a long time to figure out exactly where in the music world I was supposed to be. I have pursued many different facets: performer in classical, jazz and rock, teacher in elementary and college and private instruction, and initially a jazz composer and singer/songwriter, finally moving to composing for film and tv. While I love the whole world of music and I am grateful to have experienced so many different facets over the years, as soon as I discovered scoring for media in my 30s it felt like the absolute best fit for me and a culmination of my music journey to that point. Everything you have learned in music benefits your composing, so I feel like nothing about my journey was a waste of time. It has all culminated into what I do now.
When did you decide to move to the U.S. and why?
I had always wanted to move to America, my entire life. It was a desire that I always remember being there in my mind. I was discovered by an American Composer/Musician Patrick Kavanaugh when I was 16. My mum had invited him to come to Tasmania to speak at a music conference she was running. He told me I should move to the States to study music and my response was of course: yes please! He ended up facilitating that move after I graduated high school, and my parents also followed me a year later and we all worked with Patrick for many years. He was a brilliant musician, and I am grateful that he was my mentor during that period of my life. He passed away in 2018 but lived long enough to see a lot of my journey and growth as a composer.
I believe you told us that you began in the Northwest.
After initially living in Northern Virginia with the Kavanaughs, I moved out to Seattle. I had visited it after high school and it really resonated with me. I knew it was a great music city, and it reminded me a lot of home. Like Hobart, Tasmania it is a port town, with Mt Ranier watching over it (in Hobart we have Mt Wellington - significantly smaller!). So I moved there and eventually attended Cornish College of the Arts for my undergraduate in Jazz performance and Composition.
Recording at East West Studio 3, also known as the Pet Sounds studio, in Los Angeles
You eventually moved to LA…
I moved to LA once I had transitioned to film scoring in Seattle. Seattle was a great place to grow up as a film composer. It has a close-knit and scrappy Indie film scene and it was a fantastic place to cut my teeth in this new craft. I still work a lot with the Seattle film community, usually on at least one Seattle project at all times. And there are a lot of Seattle filmmakers who move between LA and Seattle which is wonderful. I also continue to support music education there, serving on the Advisory board of the Shoreline Community College and The Pacific NW Film Scoring Masters Program.
I am so glad I moved to LA. In a lot of ways it was like starting over because I had to build my composing career in a new community. But LA is a perfect fit for me, full of big dreamers who have sacrificed so much to be here. So I felt completely at home. Also the landscape and the gum trees remind me a lot of Australia (even though the weather in Seattle for me is much more similar to Hobart. The heat of LA was definitely an adjustment). The scene in LA really has helped me grow as a composer, and it has been a wonderful ride. The lessons learned in Seattle really prepared me to come here, and every year has been better than the last. I am extremely grateful. I am actually writing these responses on November 26th, my 12th year anniversary in LA.
In the recording booth at Evergreen Studios with Brian Taylor, score mixer for Road To Everywhere.
Talk about some of your favorite experiences, some of the highlights of your career so far.
I’ve composed a number of great features like POTATO DREAMS, which is actually a Seattle production but I scored it while here in LA. It premiered at SXSW, was written up in Variety and had a theatrical run. Going to the Laemmle Theater in Burbank and hearing my music in that theater was very special. NAUGHTY BOOKS was a feature doc I booked after connecting with the great organization Film Independent and meeting my filmmaker through that community. We premiered at the same time as the pandemic, so only did one festival. But then we immediately got distribution, and it was on Hulu for a long time which was fantastic. I also do additional music, orchestrate and live-produce scores for other composers. My music was on the Hulu/Disney show DEATH AND OTHER DETAILS. I score produced the recent Apple Plus TV series PRESUMED INNOCENT, the movie SPEAK NO EVIL and produced and composed additional arrangements on the new Netflix series KINGS OF TUPELO. I also won the David Raskin Emerging Talent award for my score for the documentary HOME IS A HOTEL. And I got to score a Sesame Street letter segment (R IS FOR REUSE) and that was a huge highlight.
Catherine Joy receives the David Raskin Award for Emerging Talent at the 2024 SCL Awards of the Society of Composers and Lyricists for HOME IS A HOTEL.
You're a composer but you're also a very experienced teacher, training young composers. Can you talk about how you have split your time between the two?
I am adjunct faculty at NYU in their screen scoring Masters Program and I also run my own Score Production workshop with my company Joy Music House. I find it really fulfilling to work with the next generation of composers and hopefully help make the next chapter of film scoring a more diverse and a healthier community for all. I believe in leaving things better than you found them, and so I do commit time to investing in our community. But it is always secondary to composing my own work. So it makes up less than 25% of my working life.
Let's talk about your experience on ROAD TO EVERYWHERE. How did that begin?
I was connected to Michael and Joe through my dear friend and mentor, the brilliant composer Steven Argila. I was really excited about the movie from the get-go because it is a road trip movie and I am bit of a gear head and love car movies. It was also such a thrill to score a film starring Whip and Robert because I was familiar with their work. There felt like a lot of synchronicity from the beginning so it was a real pleasure to score. A unique and wonderful part of working on the RTE score was having the opportunity to work with the music of Robert Mirabal. His songs were used in the scenes when we are seeing where his character Jake grew up, the land where his ancestors lived, and also moments where Jake is coming to terms with his life and his relationships. It was incredibly special and also completely appropriate. This is my favorite part of being a composer: collaborating with other musicians and learning from their music.
Composer Catherine Joy and Sound Designer Rob Marshall at the final sound mix for ROAD TO EVERYWHERE
What were the challenges you faced creating the score for ROAD? Are you pleased with the result?
I am thrilled with the result. I think the challenge in every project is dialing in the vibe and the sound. So there were a few different versions of the first long cue which is the opening title sequence. While that’s challenging it is also par for the course and I feel an important and rewarding experience because that’s when you really get to dig in with your director and learn about the film and each other’s creative approaches.
We also were able to record live big strings with FAMES orchestra in Macedonia. It is always important to me to find a way to incorporate live musicians. I think it adds so much to the score. I was thrilled to have that happen.
FAMES ORCHESTRA IN MACEDONIA recording big strings under Catherine Joy's supervision for ROAD TO EVERYWHERE
How do you imagine the next chapter of your life and career?
I just want to keep doing this: working on great projects with great people. You of course want the project to do well, to be seen, maybe even win an award or two, but I think the most important thing is that you are being challenged, continually growing as a composer, and creating work that is exciting and represents an aspect of who you are as an artist in that moment.
Left to Right: Editor Ed Abroms, Producer Joe Mealey, Composer Catherine Joy, Director Michael Paradies Shoob, Director of Photography Bruce Allan Greene and Sound Designer Rob Marshall
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