Sarah DeCourcy: That moment changed how I could output my creativity
My happy place will always be talking to other musicians about music. Even with musicians I’m meeting for the first time, we start talking about music and by the end of our conversation, we’re firm friends. Which leads me on nicely to tell you about today’s guest songwriter, producer, musical director and composer Sarah deCourcy.
We met through another musician Mr Hudson (the Mr Hudson who’s collabed with Jay Z and Kanye West on Supernova & Forever Young). We started chatting about music as musicians do, kept in touch via Instagram, Sarah moved to LA (which you’ll hear more about in our conversation) and now we’re here and today’s interview.
Sarah was a child prodigy, she started playing the piano at 3, picked up the violin and was composing violin sonatas at the age of 8! We don’t have the audio, but I’ve put a picture of the sonata manuscript in my Instagram post so you can see how prodigious she was - at 8, I was playing chopsticks!
She was performing solo piano concertos at the Royal College of Music in Manchester, leading youth orchestras as a violinist, she won young composer of the year at 9 and young musician of the year at 11. She studied classical piano and film composition at The Royal Academy of Music in London and it was there that she got into contemporary music.
Sarah has worked as a live musical director & producer for Kylie Minogue. For those who aren’t from the UK or Australia, Kylie Minogue is like a national treasure for us - it’s a big deal! She’s musical directed for Nicole Scherzinger from the Pussy Cat dolls, UK pop band Little Mix and French artist Christophe Willem amongst others. She also works as a songwriter and producer, has had 12 top 10 record releases, 2 gold and 1 platinum album. She recently moved to LA to focus on film and TV composition.
Sarah wears many hats, she’s an engineer and built her own music studio from scratch. We talk about her foundation in classical music and how she draws upon it when writing mainstream pop music. The differences between live arena production vs studio album production and our mutual love of Justin Bieber! We talk about the importance of understanding the administrative and legal side of the music industry and knowing your worth not just as a musician, but as a female musician.
Guest: Sarah deCourcy
Title: ‘That moment changed how I could output my creativity'
Music Excerpts: Terminus Elite’ & ‘Barren Lands’ score cues by Sarah deCourcy & Kylie Minogue’s live show 'Spinning Around'
Albums on playlist: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - The Proposition, Max Richter - Sleep, Mica Levi - Under the Skin