"I'm too young to be old

            and too old to be young."

Musically inspired by a little bit of everything, I am Holly, a singer-songwriter-producer who writes, performs, and produces almost all of my music solo.

 

My mother says that I literally started singing in the crib and then spent my childhood obsessively playing piano by ear, singing, and composing new songs. As a teenager, along with performing my piano/voice creations, I started dabbling with MIDI and began composing and conducting larger pieces for orchestras, small ensembles, and choruses. After earning a Bachelor of Music from the Conservatory of Music at SUNY Purchase, I took my computer background and moved around the United States a bit, creating music and audio for video game studios, while continuing to write my own music whenever I had time. Eventually, the repetitive strain motions and sitting at a desk for way too many hours every day caught up with me and began causing severe numbness, pain, and muscle spasms in my hands, arms, neck, and back. For the first few years, I was unable to play the piano, sit at a computer for long, or work a desk job, as I waited for countless unhelpful doctor's appointments. 

 

I was only able to sleep, sit, or stand for short stretches of time and, dealing with chronic exhaustion and depression, I began to question whether I was ever going to have another day again that wasn't completely dictated by my pain and what little my body could still do. Making a very conscious decision not to give up, I started moving away from a practice of strictly Western medicine and slowly found my way into the world of naturopathy and holistic healing.

 

As I began to uncover the spinal and fascial issues that had sidelined me (a long story for another time and place), I was able to get back to work by freelancing, and branched into audio for indie games and smartphone apps. The better I felt, the more I could do again, and I was determined to take better care of my body and never take my health or ability to create music for granted, ever again. I eventually made my way to Los Angeles, where I was able to apply my composition, sound design, dialogue editing, and mixing skills from the game world to film and TV post-production.

 

After a few very stressful years of endless work requests and deadlines, constantly trying to balance my pain management and mental wellbeing with other people's projects, I finally had to admit that I wasn't happy spending all of my time and creative efforts on other people's babies. It's been a long few years since then, but as of April 2019, I am finally starting to get my own music out into the world again. I don't really know what "my sound" is yet, or where I'm going to go with it, but this is the happiest I've been in years. I feel like I took a very long road around, back to where I feel the most at home, no matter where I am physically living.