I was lucky enough to interview fellow Seneca attendee, Artist, Actor, and song writer Lucy Ellis for our SaySpotlight special we are doing for our Independent Music Program graduates. I was immediately greeted with a big smile and a hello, she was very welcoming and off we went to discuss a bit about who she is and what she was here at Seneca for. Lucy has been doing music for her whole life with her being classically trained on piano and did some jazz piano in high school.
But her singing didn’t start until she was posting covers online over the pandemic. This is where the idea for school and using her time while she’s free came about. She stated “I came to this program in the summer to learn everything that I can about being an independent artist, because there is a lot of things that go into it, and things I didn’t know.” also mentioning “There was lots I didn’t know like marketing, production..”. It was clear to me Lucy is very passionate about the art of music but more importantly is someone who wants to learn and get better. Lucy has also been fairly successful online with her covers and original music over on her YouTube channel, which is at around 125k subscribers. She also mentioned later in the interview that she had a song appear in an HBO show, as well as having almost 15k followers on Instagram as well as over 70k monthly listeners on Spotify. Lucy mentioned one her favourites parts about being here at Seneca is “being able to connect with people who are around my age, people who want to learn the same things as myself”. Meeting people in the program has also given her a chance to go to open mics with a team, rather than being alone which can be intimating. Even though most of her fellow artists are under different genres, they still are so passionate about the same thing. She said “I think that us all having different preferences in terms of music style has expanded everyone’s horizons.” as well as mentioning all of her professors as one of her favourite parts of being here at Seneca.
We then went into favourites and inspirations when it comes to music as well as film. Lucy mentioned that she has been listening to a lot of folk artists. Stating “I feel like I’ve been listing to a lot of Simon & Garfunkel, more contemporary artists like Fleet Foxes, Sufjan Stevens…artists that have a cinematic feel”. She mentioned a big inspiration and influence was when entering high school she began to listen to a lot of Jazz and Jazz vocalists like “Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, etc”. We then switched gears to talk a bit about her acting side of things and aspirations when it comes to that. To Lucy she is an artist AND actor, equally both, with her saying “I find that acting and music are pretty equal for me, I’m just trying to see how I am able to balance both of them at the same time. But like music, I’ve been acting my whole life. After high school I went to theatre school for 3 years”..which lead her into getting an agent during that time. Something had peaked my interest when talking to Lucy, and that was when she had mentioned her love of compositions and movie scores. Her first movie soundtrack she fell in love with was “The Imitation Game soundtrack when I was in grade 10 or something, I’d only listen to that. More recently the Oppenheimer soundtrack was really well done, Manchester by the Sea was also really nice. Also anything by Justin Hurwitz”.
After we had the interview I had asked if there was anything she wanted to shoutout or promote. She mentioned a Christmas song is on the way as well as her debut EP “Coming of Age” set to release in the new year. A big goal of Lucy’s is to make a living from just the arts, and not have to get a second job in order to pay rent, and I know she can do it! Extremely talented and a pleasure to meet her. If you want to follow her on Instagram it’s @lucellis or Lucy Ellis on YouTube and streaming.
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