Women in Music: Starr Parodi

When Starr Parodi began her career in music it wasn’t necessarily a smooth road for women in the industry. Playing in bands and scoring for film 30 years ago was not nearly as common as it is today. Parodi discovered the key to leading the path forward was stepping out of her comfort zone and being open to any and every opportunity.

Today, Parodi is an award winning composer, producer and performer who is a past president of the Alliance for Women Film Composers and who last year won a Grammy for her work on an album called “An Adoption Story.” 

As a performer, Parodi has played everything from solo classical piano to synthesizers in soul bands. She was a member of the house band the “Arsenio Hall Show” and played Carnegie Hall opening for Whitney Houston. Arguably her most prolific output has been as a film composer, scoring music for feature films and trailers for iconic films like “Harry Potter,” “Star Wars: Rogue One,” and “Mission Impossible 2.” 

CapRadio’s Jennifer Reason sat down with Parodi to discuss some of her most recent achievements and the idea of simply believing in yourself. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

On Winning her latest Grammy Award

I’ve been kind of leading a dual life, I guess because I’ve always considered myself an artist and a pianist, but I also love cinematic music and writing to picture. I was so fortunate to be introduced to Kitt Wakeley, who’s an artist as well. He lives in Oklahoma. He called my partner Jeff and I and wanted to do a classical album and asked us to produce it and me to play piano on it. 

It turned out that his story was so remarkable because he was adopted. There were a lot of late night calls, and as he opened up to me about his story of being abandoned on the side of the road when he was five — going through six foster homes and countless other stories that are maybe a little bit too personal to share — I was just so honored to be able to work and tell his story through music. 

On working with the Alliance for Women Film Composers

There’s just not enough words to say good about this organization. It was founded officially around 2016. There were not many of us and we were all pretty isolated. There was just — I don’t wanna say crumbs — but if there was a job for a woman we were all in competition with each other and we didn’t really know each other. 

There’s this famous quote that I really love and it’s, “you can never really have something that you don’t want someone else to have.” 

I kind of live my life by that because this is such a competitive business, but there’s really not a lot of room for jealousy. I think what the alliance has done is bring together a community of women who really support each other and lift each other up. Our website has a directory of women composers and I think we have over 800 members now worldwide. 

On the challenges of the industry 

I really feel like a lot of women, including myself, sometimes doubt what we deserve. And yet, we’ve been putting in the time and the expertise is huge and massive. Believing that sometimes is the challenge. 

On her advice to other women in the field

Everything is so nonlinear. I feel like with college and social media and everything, it seems like there’s a path and I don’t know that there’s a straight line or a path. 

I’ve said this many times but I feel like there’s no “there” to get to. Every time you get to “there,” it moves and you go “oh, well I did that, ok now what.” 

Life is just such a journey and music is a huge part of it, but it’s not everything. A career has many phases. You can go up and you can be on top of the world and then you can go down a little bit and then you go up or you take a turn. You say, “I’m going to say yes to this,” and even though you don’t necessarily feel like an expert at it, you’re going to say “yes, I’m going to become an expert because I’m going to learn.” 

Being a lifelong learner and realizing that there’s not a point to get to, but a long beautiful road; that would be my advice.

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