Carla Patullo GRAMMY-Winning Composer on her album Nomadica, Grief, LGBTQ+ Mentorship & Healing

Below is the transcript of my interview with composer Carla Patullo. The podcast, video, and show notes with all the links are here at this button link.

Carla Patullo:

Sometimes when someone passes, suddenly you've got all these unresolved things with them, right? Through different stages of your life, when you're going through things, they hit you differently. For me, I am now five years cancer free. I went through breast cancer and that was a real pivot for me in my grieving process with my mom. And I think it's because of the coming out of that and the appreciation I had to do a really deep dive into what I'm grateful for and what I did get to experience with her was pretty amazing.

Leah Roseman:

Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman, and I'm sure you'll be moved by this week's episode with composer Carla Patullo, speaking about processing grief that inspired her new album Nomadica. In 2024, Carla won a Grammy award for SO SHE HOWLS for Best New Age, Ambient or Chant album. Carla spoke to me about her cancer journey, how this beautiful project Nomadica has helped her process, the sudden death of her mother, and the inspiring collaborations with Martha Wainwright, the Scorchio Quartet, an tonality. You'll also hear about her projects with her partner, Elizabeth Beech, about the animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger, her longtime collaboration with Sandra Bernhard, and how important mentors in the LGBTQ+ community like Sandra and Laura Karpman have helped Carla be comfortable with herself. You'll hear about Carla's close-knit Italian family and her early years as she developed her compositional voice and her career as a touring performer. Like all my episodes, you can watch the video or listen to the podcast. The transcript is linked in the show notes along with several other episodes I think you'll love as well. All the clips from Nomadica are listed in the timestamps, and you can buy or stream the album from Carla's website, also linked.

Hey Carla, thanks so much for joining me here today.

Carla Patullo:

Thanks so much for having me, Leah.

Leah Roseman:

So as people are listening to this, your new album, Nomadica has just been out for a couple of days and people are going to be able to hear some clips from that if they haven't heard it yet. And I'm going to encourage people to go right to your Bandcamp and buy the album if they love what they hear.

Carla Patullo:

Thank you.

Leah Roseman:

So it's a beautiful album. Thanks for sending me a preview copy. I've so enjoyed listening to it. I know this is very personally meaningful, so do you want to get right into that?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah. A year ago I was coming up on the 20th anniversary of my mother's passing. She passed away in a car accident. And grief is this endless thing that you experience with losing someone so close to you, and certainly through the last 20 years have been going through the different stages of it, sometimes repeating the stages of grief over and over again, getting lost in a cycle of it. There was so much about my mom's passing that was just hard to accept. Also, there's a great amount of forgiveness that I've been trying to seek out of it. I think sometimes when someone passes, suddenly you've got all these unresolved things with them, and so sometimes it's just through different stages of your life when you're going through things, they hit you differently. For me, I am now five years cancer free. I went through breast cancer and that was a real pivot for me in my grieving process with my mom.

And I think it's because of the coming out of that and the appreciation I had to do a really deep dive into what I'm grateful for and what I did get to experience with her was pretty amazing. And so brought me into this album because I began writing after my last record and I felt like I was in this place now where I could fully celebrate her, which opened the door to being able to write about these conversations I never got to have with her. And so the music really began just flowing out. And then I surrounded myself by, I was very inspired by a movie called All of Us Strangers by Andrew Hay, which was a very similar story in a way. And the music just started pouring out of me and it no matter became this kind of place where I could kind of travel to and have these imaginary conversations with my mom. So it was really unique in that way to me. Different from other albums, I'd written

Leah Roseman:

The title, Nomadica, traveling. Where do you come by that title?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, I've been nomadic in many ways how I deal with hard things. I feel like I am a traveler. Some people when they're going through something hard, it's harder to stay still and to meditate and to be in this one place. And with trauma, I find myself constantly trying to move. And so I felt like with my mom and with this album, I needed to have this motion, this feeling of motion in order to process what I was going through. And I thought about a place, what if there was this place that is Nomadica is this place where you're searching, where there's that connection that you can be with that loved one.

Leah Roseman:

I was thinking that in SO SHE HOWLS, your Grammy award-winning beautiful album, people will hear some of the same lush sounds because you have both the Scorchio Quartet and Tonality.

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, the Scorchio Quartet has been such a wonderful group of women that I've been able to collaborate with it. They're brilliant musicians. I'm so fortunate that they carve time out for me because they're playing everywhere. But also they're not only brilliant in the sense of technical, they are able to open themselves up and get vulnerable with me and to experience, put themselves out there and experience what this album is and how it connects to them. Like Lorenzo Ponce, she had lost her mother within the last, I think a few years ago, and she dove into the solos and when she came out of that room, she had these tears coming down her face. And I mean, she really got vulnerable with it. And I think to give that into a performance is really special, I think. (Music: clip of A Handblown World)

Leah Roseman:

Yeah. So I got to know your work through Martha Mooke, who was on this podcast. And actually during that episode, you generously let us share a clip of SO SHE HOWLS. And actually I was trying to talk to you for a while, but we're both so busy.

Carla Patullo:

I know.

Leah Roseman:

But no, but it was great. You said Leah, I have this new project coming out. Why don't we wait? So this was fortuitous actually.

Carla Patullo:

I mean, I'm so happy and that we were able to do this, and I was really excited to talk to you about this album because I think for me it's a real growth and it's also just something I'm excited to share. People we struggle with grief, everybody loses someone so close to them. And if I can offer something that is connecting or just you feel that music connection with something, I think why music's so powerful, even if we feel isolated, we could feel isolated together. But Martha Mooke, there she is just, wow, she's extraordinary. I met her in a composing BMI did a workshop for film scoring years ago, and we just hit it off and I just had this feeling like, oh, I really want to do something with her. And we're actually collaborating on another piece right now too, so it's very exciting. Yeah,

Leah Roseman:

Yeah. I was thinking about losing people close to us, and I lost my mom a number of years ago and it was a fairly traumatic situation, but it was not an accident. It was still, but I know several people personally who've lost their parents in car accidents. It's such a shock.

Carla Patullo:

Yes.

Leah Roseman:

You'd had dinner with your mom, right?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, so my mom had come over to my house. We had had this wonderful dinner. I had just moved back to the Springfield area as a home base while I went on tour. And we just had this beautiful dinner and her house was about 15 minutes for me, and she just left that night and that was it. And there was so much, because it's very unclear how the accident happened. It was kind of a freak accident in the sense that there was a police officer, she was blinded by the lights, he was hidden, given tickets and accidentally ran her off the road and nobody, it was just this real weird, bizarre thing. And I think because I never got the answers to that of exactly what happened, the police department kind of covered their tracks, so was just like, I didn't get that closure. So I kind of had to shift that energy into, well, this was an accident regardless of what happened, it was an accident.

And I had to just accept that and eventually forgive that person if they did do that for what happened, because it was an accident. And there was a lot of that, I think. But I was also in my early twenties at the time, and I had at that time converted the emotions or musically what I was doing was I was very angsty. I was very angry. And that really came out in my music. And I kind of went down this really dark path for a while where I was just, at the point I wasn't even singing anymore on stage, I was just screaming and I had blaring guitars. It was very different music. I was just trying to get that out. And I think looking back, I was trying to heal. So yeah.

Leah Roseman:

Do you find you speak to your mom daily, is she in your head a little bit?

Carla Patullo:

She is. And that really didn't happen until I was going through cancer. When I was going through cancer. It was like I kind of regained this sense of the whole, everything else around me was secondary and I was just like so in my head with what's going to happen next? What's going, what is my diagnosis dealing with that, what's going to happen? And there was somehow I just began remembering these moments with her in particular when I was going through radiation, that process of being in a machine, when you're about to go through radiation, you're in this room with different people who are about to have radiation with you and you start to talk and build this community. It's kind of beautiful looking back at it in the sense that we all just connected and had these deep connections with each other pretty instantly. And it reminded me of the moments that I was at my mom's hair salon. She was a hairdresser and how we would sit around and have these beautiful conversations and there was something weird about how that felt the same in a way.

And then when I would go into the radiation room, just by chance the technicians, they would be playing music that I was hearing growing up in the hair salon. So it made me feel this connection to my mom there. And it was almost like this portal of thinking about those fun moments with my mom in the hair salon and escaping the reality a little bit of where I actually was. I really began to feel her around. I could hear her thoughts almost as I was going through things. And in particular with this album, I just really felt her presence. I felt like my mom wasn't a trained singer, but she sang, she grew up in a very small town in Italy and she would sing all the time so I could feel that energy. It's really strange because I am not a real religious person or anything. So it was like this spiritual thing that I hadn't really experienced in a very, very long time.

Leah Roseman:

Was your mom the kind of hairdresser that people opened up to in the chair?

Carla Patullo:

Oh yeah. And her salon, it was so cute, she ran it with my godmother and she ran it for up until the day she died 25 years. She was very young when she got into it and people would just come in and share their stories we're Italian, so my mom would always have a little pizza, little things around, and everyone would just hang out and get their hair done and get dolled up to go somewhere. And it was a really warm place. (Music: clip of Nomadica)

Leah Roseman:

Do you want to talk about Tonality? I mean their integral part of the album and Alexander Lloyd Blake, their musical director.

Carla Patullo:

Yes. Tonality. I stumbled upon them here in LA. They've been doing a lot of film work and just always they put on these fabulous events where they really go deep in their concepts and it's really about connecting and people, community coming together, people having the space to show them themselves to people and to express themselves, or sometimes they feel unheard and they get this up space to really just share their story with people. And I think it's really moving. Their concerts are incredible. They're intimate, but very, you feel like you're a part of the performance in that sense. With Alex, again, I just wanted that connection, the human voice connection and and whenever they come into my studio, it's a super magical moment for me because we have about just a little 12 piece choir. But to have all those voices together in this small intimate space, and especially after the ideas have been there for a while and I have MIDI choir on stuff, it's just to hear it come to life and they bring it to this new level and it's really cool. Yeah,

Leah Roseman:

I have to say the name of your studio, the Soundry, what a great studio name.

Carla Patullo:

Well, thank you. It's funny, I try to say we're making sound and open that to beyond music, to things that even just translate to music. So yeah, thank you.

Leah Roseman:

So the final track and performed with Martha Wainwright, I was curious if you knew her personally before this project

Carla Patullo:

I did not, but many years ago in New York, I did a performance with Sandra Bernhard, Rufus Wainwright and Liza Minnelli, and it was this really fun show where it was really Sandra's show, but she invited guests to come and perform. And that evening we did a tribute to Kate McGarrigle, Rufus Wainright's mom. And I thought it was just a real beautiful performance. I was just really, I don't know, when I say beautiful performance, I'm not talking about myself in it. I'm talking about Rufus and Sandra. I was playing the piano and just kind of watching that tribute happen and I was really moved by it. And years, years later now I've been, I was thinking I would love to have a distribute to my mom, come full circle with Martha. And I had loved Martha's music throughout the years and her voice has just, I mean it, it's so unique and I mean, it's up there, my favorite voices and I thought, you know what?

Let me just reach out to her and see if this is something she would be interested in. And we immediately connected with the mom thing. And so she's also, I think close to the age of my mom when she passed. So I thought it would be this beautiful thing of this kind of duet together. And so it's mainly Martha on the track, but I join her in little bits. It was a really incredible experience in the studio with her. She's just, I don't want to be cheesy, but it's just magic when she gets behind that microphone, it's just like, wow, there's so much there. (Music clip of Fly Under)

Leah Roseman:

The cover art of this album, do you

Carla Patullo:

Want to explain a little bit? Yeah. Well, first of all, the cover was designed by a good friend of mine, Jamie Dwyer, and my niece Olivia, actually also painted part of the Nomadica world, which I was really excited. Now we have three generations of my family on this record. But yeah, I mean Jamie and I, he's worked on all my album covers and we spoke about what Nomadica meant, like traveling, what's this, imagine, what's this world look like? I think it, it's darker than my last record, but there's also something that's beautiful in this Nomadica world and that's where those lighter tones, the pink. And so we try to do this combination of the two, the dark contrast with that, and I'm like, the world is inside me. It's part of my body. So yeah, that's where that came out of.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, it's great to see an album and have it pique your interest.

Carla Patullo:

Oh, cool. I'm glad you like it.

Leah Roseman:

So you mentioned your mom was Italian, and I know that you grew up singing some Italian songs and your grandmother had actually asked you to record her.

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, my grandmother, she was so sweet and great, she used to love to sing. So the town that my family's from, it's a region in Italy called Campobasso. It's kind of like middle of nowhere farmland. And within that there is this small town called Pitti and the population's like 20, it's like a road, and that's where my grandmother is from and my mom ,and being so small, they have these traditions, these traditional songs they sing on the farm and she wanted me to learn these songs because she was afraid they'd get lost. I think in a way she wanted to preserve them, and so she would sing them to me, and this is what she knew too. And so she would sing them and she would say, we would have these tape recorders just like, yeah, record me singing this. I want you to have this when I die, I want you to remember me, but also to remember these songs and this is where we come from. So that was always really that stuck with me. I think about that now when I record, what am I preserving? This is something that's going to stay and be shared long after I'm gone, hopefully

Leah Roseman:

Have you used any of those recordings of your grandmother singing in your work directly?

Carla Patullo:

I've got a few tapes I've been trying to preserve and sometimes I'll bring them in. I didn't use them on Nomadica, but SO SHE HOWLS, I had a little snippet that I slowed down of stuff and I did use actually a clip of my mom in Nomadica on the last track. It was something I found on a VHS recording, and it's just this message that she was saying. It was, I think a communion or I grew up Catholic, so it was this event where she was just saying, I love you very much, and I was able to piece it together. So I really wanted to keep her voice, include her voice like that on it. Just something that could also, I mean for me, when I hear it, it's really special because when I hear her voice, it's special. I hope if someone listening to it, they can feel that or some part of that or think about someone they've lost and their voice.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, I was thinking how of course it was before we had phones recording our lives and it's so precious just to have a little snippet like that.

Carla Patullo:

A little something. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, I was thinking, someone was telling me about some app they use with a friend of theirs to communicate, it's like video chatting, but the message disappears afterwards and I thought, why would you want that to happen?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, I know that's like the world we're living in now. It's like now everyone wants everything to go away.

Leah Roseman:

So in terms of your Italian heritage, you made several trips to Italy.

Carla Patullo:

I've gone, it was really important for my family. All my cousins are pretty much there, and they really wanted me to see my aunts and uncles and have that because I think when you immigrate to a new country, you're, you don't know as many people, and so we definitely felt that we had a couple cousins in the States, but I do feel this great connection with my relatives out there, so I try to go visit and keep that going.

Leah Roseman:

In terms of, you mentioned you grew up Catholic, did you sing in a choir growing up? Was that part of your musical?

Carla Patullo:

I would say the first, up until about 11, I went to Catholic school and then thankfully, I was excited, I got to go to public school, though I was sad to leave my friends at the time, but there was a music class there that I really loved. It wasn't a choir, it was this man named Mr. Mastriani who would basically come into class and sing to us. It was really adorable when I look back at it now and he would just kind of get us to sing with him these songs, so it wasn't full on choir, but it was really cute and I loved it though. I loved music class and I liked he would play the piano and I was very intrigued by the piano playing. My parents got me this toy piano when I was a kid, actually, my grandmother got it for me.

But anyways, I would sing with them and I learned to clunk out. I was just, they put it there thinking I'd play with it, but I really got into it. I was like, this is my instrument. And I would clunk out little melodies. I feel like from that early age, from what I can remember is that I just wanted to write things. I wasn't really trying to play other music, and by the time I got to 11 or 12, I was like, oh, I just want to write. I want to write an album. And I was about 12 when I put out my first demo, and I just went to this local little studio this guy had in his basement, and I had written three songs and I recorded myself on keyboard and tape and I mean keyboard and vocals, and it was just fun. I made my own artwork. It's all sketched out and it's a handwritten tape cassette, and I was like, this is what I want to do. And then by the age of 16, I did my first full length album and learning instruments was like, I needed to learn these instruments so I could play what I wrote, but writing was always the fundamental part, the part that I enjoyed the most.

Leah Roseman:

So I was curious, you went to Berklee, so what point did that happen and how did it help you?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, I mean, my parents having come to the States, they were all into the American dream and they wanted me to go to college. They were like, we don't really care what you study, but you have to be the first of us to go to college. That was very important. And so yeah, I was like, well, there's Berklee and Boston. It's not that far. And they were like, okay, well why don't you apply, see if you get in. And I was really excited. I applied to two schools and I was really excited to go there. I think first of all, it just showed that my parents were supporting what I love, and they were like, go for it. They believed in me, and then I also was just excited to finally study something that I really love. So I ended up going and it was a really great experience. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

Did you study film scoring there, or what was your major?

Carla Patullo:

No, I actually studied songwriting. I was like, mom, my major's going to be songwriting, and that kind of was scary, I think. But yeah, I did a lot of performance stuff and songwriting at the time. It's wonderful how many people that go to that school are from out of the US outside the US. So I met so many people from all over the world, learned a lot, learned a lot, just about different cultures. It was really a great melting pot I think for music.

Leah Roseman:

In your early career you were performing, it was more of a touring life.

Carla Patullo:

Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

Was that people you met at school?

Carla Patullo:

Some. I met a lot of people when I got to New York soon after, because everyone kind of disperses after I did graduate. Not a lot of people stay through all of Berklee, but I did, and I went to New York and that's when I started to meet other people in the area and really kind of discover what my sound is, this, what do I want to do? And I formed this project, this band called White Widow. It was really like angsty rock, and I started meeting really great musicians and convinced them to go on the road with me.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, you'd mentioned Sandra Bernhard earlier because of the Rufus Wainwright connection, but you toured a music director, or was it just in New York?

Carla Patullo:

I did! Yeah, so funny enough, I grew up watching Sandra Bernhard on the old Roseanne show, and I always thought it was so cool how she brought music into her comedy in a very different way where it wasn't slapstick comedy, it was just really deep in this way. It's really cool. Anyways, how she incorporates her show music into her show. But after New York, I headed out to Austin, Texas for a bit. I met my partner and she was heading out that way, and I decided to go with her. That was a big move, and it was one year at South by Southwest where I did a show and opened for Sandra, and it was a typical SXSW show we were in a parking lot that had a stage, and we opened for her and she really dug my band and she was like, Hey, do you want to come do a show in San Francisco?

But it would just be like a solo thing just accompany me on a couple tracks. I was like, okay, yeah, sure. And we just hit it off and I ended up touring with her for a couple years and actually working on material with her. Now she's a long time friend, and it was a great experience. It opened up my world to different venues, a different audience in a way. At the time I felt I was in this one genre, and now I feel like it brought me into film in a way too, because I was supporting this other story arc that wasn't mine. So it opened even that. So it was really a wonderful experience and it brought me to LA.

Leah Roseman:

She's been, especially for someone of her generation, she's been pretty visible as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. So that must have been important to you at the time?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, I've been so lucky in the sense that I've had mentors that have this, like Sandra Bernhard. There's a composer out here, Laura Karpman, who's fabulous that I've studied with, and it's important because one of the conversations for me in Nomadica was I never came out to my mom, and that was really hard. I think also just coming to the terms of at the time she kind of knew but didn't accept it was the vibe, but we never fully got to hash it out. So having that support, I think from people like Sandra and being able to be myself around them. I met Sandra a few years after my mom died, so being able to have had somebody like that in my life was really powerful. I think for me to become who I am today and to accept myself.

Leah Roseman:

And things have changed a lot for the better, mostly

Carla Patullo:

Yeah

Leah Roseman:

in the last 20 years. Maybe your mom would've had a different attitude.

Carla Patullo:

I think she would've, and I think she just didn't have the time to do it. We just ran out of time and no, I don't hesitate now to think about if she would accept my partner. I actually feel pretty strongly, but she would love my partner just because I know who my mom was. And so, yeah.

Leah Roseman:

So actually maybe we could talk about your project with Elizabeth about Lotte Reiniger that I saw that beautiful little film you guys made.

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, another, Lotte, I never obviously got to meet her, but I feel her energy because it's just, she has shared so much and not just the films. She's left behind, she's left. I have this wonderful book where she explains how to make a silhouette film. She had so much joy in making these type of films. She really just wanted to share that with people and leave it with people, and I really, it's like my grandmother and I really connect with that. I learn more about her as I go. We're working on another project about her, our short film, about her being this pioneer, creating the first feature length animation a decade before Disney. Inventing, her and her film crew invented the Multiplane camera, which later was credited and trademarked or by Disney, so I'm not like anti Disney, but there's some things that Disney did here that kind helped push her out of history in a way. But the way that she cared about her work, I mean, she did these stop motion animation puppets made out of this type of cardboard, but basically she filmed it at 24 frames per second, which is took her years to make this film, and she did it with a small crew, and I really love that it wasn't manufactured by this big company.

Leah Roseman:

Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I’ve linked several episodes I’m sure you’ll love in the show notes for you, with Anze Rozman and Kara Talve, Adam Blau, Martha Mooke, EmmoLei Sankofa, J. Walter Hawkes and Kavisha MazzellaYou’ll also find the link to sign up for my newsletter, and the main reason for you to do so, aside from each weekly episode, is that you’ll get exclusive information about upcoming guests. Finally, please support this independent project, for which I do all the many jobs and which costs me quite a bit of money personally: you can share this episode with a friend, write a review, buy some podcast merch, or buy me a coffee on my Ko-fi page, either once or every month. All these links are in the show notes. Thanks! Now back to Carla Patullo!

Carla Patullo:

So I met about maybe seven years ago now, a man named Paul who was a close friend to her, and he shared his story with her before he passed away. So I just keep learning about these who she was and all these things she gave to people and how she grew through her life and the struggles she had. It's just very inspiring for me and I think for women.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, I found that project on YouTube. Is it linked in your website? I can link it directly in the show notes too.

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, it might be in my Instagram and on my website, but it's called Lotte, That Silhouette Girl. Yeah, it was an interesting process because we do have a couple snippets or one main snippet of her film, Prince Achmed that we used, but the rest we did, Elizabeth really, she's like an architect, but also she built the camera exactly like Lotte using the book with the instructions and all of that. She took her puppets and remade them, and so it was quite a process. It's an 11 minute film. It took us a couple years to make

Leah Roseman:

We hear Lotte's voice on it. So what was that from?

Carla Patullo:

We came across that in the archives at USC, and we kind of went to them and explained what we were doing, and they were excited and they were like, wow, the whole conversation's about 45 minutes long, and we took it. We knew that we could only make an 11 minute film, and we tried to wrap it up in 11 minutes and just have it be this, her telling her story and just use that as a way to narrate it. And so yeah, it was a very special interview. I think I encourage people to go listen to it, actually. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

So speaking of filmmaking, I mean, you do write a lot for films and some of your songs have been used in all kinds of things. At the very beginning of this, you mentioned that a movie, All of Us Strangers had influenced you for Nomadica?

Carla Patullo:

It's a really beautiful film by Andrew Hay, and I think because there's so much about it, there's the surrealism about it, he travels. I don't want to give away too much of the film, but I've watched it by this point probably at least 50 times, a lot! I've like really analyzed this film inside Out, and every time I watch it, I feel something a little different. And really, the first time I watched it, it really packed a punch and it opened something up for me, like an emotion that I was locked in deeply, and it really inspired me to keep that open and let's, what is this I'm feeling? And I think art, music, films, they can unlock these doors that are shut, that are just from trauma. You just haven't been able to go there. For example, too, a couple of weeks ago, I lost my uncle and I haven't really been able to grieve about it yet, and he's in Italy, so he was in Italy. So it's just like this disbelief going on, but film is so powerful, it just resonates and I think that's why I'm composing a lot for it. I like to escape into that world of the film and really absorb it.

Leah Roseman:

You have one of your tracks is called Isochronic Waves, so I did look up what that meant. So do you want to speak to that a little bit?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, I was really, Isochronic tones is something I came across these isochronic tones in music, and I began to really experiment with these pulses and just kind of find these frequencies that would evoke relaxation or get me into a state where I could really let myself process these heavy things without the intensity being so much that I can't open up and can't take it in. So I began just playing with different tones and trying to incorporate that in a way where I recorded Martha and I recorded them doing this bed of sound that was one of 'em was a train track setting where there's a train going by and I asked them to improvise this pad basically where they would make sounds together as a quartet.

Then what I did was I took some of that and I slowed it down. I love to slow things down because there's so much happening in these vibrations that when you slow stuff down, you can catch these beautiful things that just go by too fast. And then I began adding a tremolater to it at a certain hertz to emulate this kind of isochronic tone to give that pulse and get us into this tone of relaxation to bring us into the track. So you hear that in different spaces where I'm getting started, the track Nomadica starts with these tones with trying to get people into the story and just also emulate the train tracks. That's the interesting thing with the tones and the train tracks, you kind of hear that leading you into the tracks. (Music: clip of Isochronic Waves)

Leah Roseman:

So in your work as a film Scar composer, you do try to choose projects that resonate with you. You want to emphasize inclusion for women and immigrants, and so I checked out some of your projects. I was able to just see a little bit of, my name is Maria de Jesus.

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, that was a wonderful little film. I remember when she came with me, this was years ago with that film. I think that's something that she was a real big part of her story and things that she had experienced, and it was really important for her to get this film out and I could feel that urgency in her, and I was really excited. I also ended up doing some sound design for that film. I was really excited to be a part of it. It resonated with me and my family upbringing. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

Did you speak Italian growing up or English with your parents?

Carla Patullo:

I did, a very broken farmer Italian, so many dialects in Italy. Sometimes if I find myself in Florence or something visiting, I'll bring out my Italian that I grew up with, and they're like, where are you from? You sound like a southern Italian from meets like American. Yeah, but my grandmother mainly spoke Italian. My mom spoke English pretty well, actually. My dad's Italian English wasn't really good, so we spoke it at home.

Leah Roseman:

I used to study Italian and I learned enough that on a couple of trips I was able to communicate with people. I remember this guy we'd rented this place from, and I was able to communicate with him and he said, I'm so glad because I know English, but I hate speaking it.

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, I mean, it's a very beautiful language, but I always get, I'm so impressed by all the different ways. Years ago I went to a place in Italy called Goro, which is another project I've been working on very slowly, but about an Italian singer out there who passed away a couple of years ago named Melva, and we went to her hometown. We got to see Melva and interview her before she passed. But we went to her small town and they spoke completely different Italian and it was really tricky, but they thought it was cute, the dialect and the stuff that I was saying that they would say in southern Italy. So it was really, it's really incredible. All the different dialects. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

I was wondering if your cancer, you've been five years cancer free, so was that sort of you got better just before the pandemic broke out or sort of overlapped with that as well?

Carla Patullo:

Well, it's overlapped. I got diagnosed right before the pandemic, and then I began my treatment and basically the beginning of the year of 2020, right before COVID. Yeah, I mean, it was just crazy. I had her2 positive breast cancer, which is, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's a type of, first of all, there's so many types of breast cancer. I learned pretty quickly. They caught mine relatively early, but I had to do a really had do the chemo. I had to do the surgery, I had to do the radiation, I had to do the post medicine. And that's the thing with her2 positive 30 years ago, that was a very, very deadly cancer. It's a fast growing cancer, but then a doctor from UCLA here created this drug called Herceptin, which really changed it. And these women did this experimental trial, and basically I took that medicine and it was like a miracle drug for me. And many people, it's changed the outcome. I mean, it's a long road. You're going to be on medicine for a couple years, and I still continue to take hormone blockers and stuff like that, but it's a road. At least it's a path to overcome it. And yeah, it was a journey.

I won't go too much into healthcare in this country, but it was a journey just trying to, you really have to advocate for your health and for when it comes to dealing with insurance and stuff like that, it's very hard.

Leah Roseman:

Well, you were relatively young. I was wondering if you connected with other patients in a similar age group?

Carla Patullo:

I did, which is really, I think it's very common. I think that there's what we're eating, how we're living, we have a lot of toxic stuff. No one in my family had breast cancer, so this was a big wake up call to me. What am I doing? I call myself Carla 2.0 now because I made a drastic change in the food I eat. I no longer have alcohol. I don't do the occasional smoke, none of that. I'm very, really watch the food I eat and what fresh vegetables, all that stuff. Where is this coming from? It takes a lot of energy and money to eat healthy in this country.

Leah Roseman:

What other self-care things have changed since that time?

Carla Patullo:

Well, I've started boxing. That has been a great sport for me. Being active. The thing that I fell into with my work and how my work was toxic was the long hours not prioritizing my health. And the thing that I noticed that wasn't good for my work and my health was pushing myself to do things. When my body was saying no, I now am on a schedule where I leave my studio and I go for my long walks. I go to the gym. Even if I have a crazy deadline at the end of the week, I do it. And you know what? I come back to the studio much better shape to write, much better shape to get the job done, and I sleep. That was a thing that I would not allow myself to do when I had a crazy deadline and I do it. And things have shifted into what really is important. I think it's so easy to get caught up in this work, work and this ladder of reaching this with your, to me, it's like I just want to put out good work, and in order to put out good work, my body needs to be in a good place. If you don't have your health, you can't really do much.

Leah Roseman:

Do you feel very different with Carla 2.0?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, I have so much more energy. I have so much more energy. I feel like I'm more creative in this way. I am better with my boundaries. It is something where just all around in my life, because when I was sick, I'd be like, oh, I don't have the energy to do that. And I would say it to people and they'd be like, oh, yeah, of course you're going through chemo. But now it's like, well, I don't have the energy to do that because I'm overworked and I need this space for myself, this grace of giving my body to live day to day.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, that definitely resonates with me. Well, you have some of it's beautiful titles. I just wanted to talk to some of the titles if we're going to include clips Below the Surface.

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, Below the Surface was just, I really kind coming out of, it's like I imagine this whole album of going into Nomadica traveling around it and then kind of coming out of it on another side, and that's what Below the Surface is it's kind of emerging. And as I was coming out of that and going into the track, Fly Under, I felt like this was a goodbye. But also I'm carrying these memories and this experience with me wherever I go. (Music: clip Below the Surface)

Leah Roseman:

Maybe we could just talk, you have a new project if it's completed yet, a new musical with Cory Hinkle, The Hurricane. Do you want to talk about that?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, we've been crafting this one for about seven years now. And of course other projects, as you to know, have come in and out too. But this is a story about grief, again, about a hurricane that happened in Texas years ago. It's kind of a fictional story based on that, but it's dealing with the trauma of a sudden loss. So I was really able to connect with it in this way. One of the characters loses somebody very close to her, and we kind of go into this kind of world, this surreal world of her finding her way out of it. So in many ways, I think Nomadica is actually, now that I'm talking to you about, I'm inspired by it, but what I love about musical theater is that it's live and you experience it with different musicians, different actors, and you see it in different ways or just different performances are different. And the music is kind of based. I lived in Austin, so I incorporate a lot of the sounds I was hearing when I was out in Austin and in Texas. And so it's really fun because one of my favorite singers of all time is Aretha Franklin, which I get to get very acapella and spiritual of this, and I feel like I'm able to reference her, incorporate some of the ways she's inspired me musically into it. We're hoping to release an album of it maybe next year our fingers are crossed.

Leah Roseman:

Okay. Yeah. I mean, so many of these projects have long arcs.

Carla Patullo:

And

Leah Roseman:

I know with SO SHE HOWLS, you actually did some live performances quite a bit after it came out.

Carla Patullo:

I did! I love Martha, Martha Mooke, because always doing stuff. It's so amazing how she keeps her performances going, and she was like, Hey, let's do this show. Let's do that. And I'm like, okay. And so just one of the things of coming out of cancer was what can I do with, I've had some changes in my voice. I was still kind of fresh out of this, still feeling side effects. I finished a medicine right after the recording, SO SHE HOWLS, but I had really bad side effects of the fatigue was insane, but I was like, what do I have the energy to do? And I really felt like I was learning to ride a horse again or something, you know what I mean? Just get back to it. And it's been really wonderful to have Martha because she encourages and she has these great ideas and she's like, Hey, let's do that show. Let's do that show, let's go. And so I love it. I love, I'm finding myself back to the stage and I am really excited about it.

Leah Roseman:

I mean, the life of a film composer can be a bit lonely, I think. Right?

Carla Patullo:

Very lonely. Although I'm starting a new film project and I was invited out to set, and that was an incredible experience. But usually, yeah, I'm in my studio just kind of sitting here playing with stuff, and then I'm like, oh, time to go out in the real world and get some lunch or something. It's very isolating. But performing to me is the first time I performed after this whole experience. I felt like it was a form of meditation. It was this beautiful way of, again, being in the moment and just being present on stage that is so powerful. It's amazing. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

So maybe to wrap this up, you won this Grammy for SO SHE HOWLS. How did it change your career at all? Is it easier to make your own decisions?

Carla Patullo:

In a way, I mean, there were two things. There were two things that happened at the same time was like, yeah, I was overcoming the cancer part. And then winning the Grammy was just unbelievable, because here I am thinking, not thinking. I mean, I also was just film composing, not thinking I was going to have a solo career again or whatever. So there's just so many unbelievable things that were happening. So that whole like, wow, I can do anything. I feel like I can go for it. Why not? It is still with me. I carry that with me. It's like, why not? I think you're waiting for something. Or it's like, no, it's here. Let's go. And I tell my nieces and aspiring people, why not? If I can do it, you can do it. You just have to really appreciate life in a way.

If you realize and really think about it, you're only here for a certain amount of time and you got to live in this now. You got to, who cares if you fail? You have your health. If you have your health and you are able, or even if you don't have your health and you're healing from something, go for it. That's the biggest takeaway. Sure. I think there's some doors that have opened and people are now like, oh, I'll look at your music. I'll check out your music. In the film community, more people have heard of me now and they want me to score their work. So it has helped in that sense of opening doors. I think though for me, it's always going to be about the fact that of what I went through and just saying, I could go from this really horrible place to this really great place and that transformation. Hopefully if something like this happens again, or which I'm sure it will, it's life that I can do it, I can do it, and I can try. And the process of going from one place to that other place was actually quite beautiful.

Leah Roseman:

Carla, I was thinking about young Carla. You were talking about making your first demo. She wouldn't have been surprised, right?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's this thing when you're a kid, right? You, you're like, I'm going to go for this. So sometimes you get beaten up along the way with the rejection and the other things in life that weigh you down. So it's hard to hold onto that thing that you had as a kid. This is, I think, something that came out of cancer, just being able to have that everything's possible again,

Leah Roseman:

Your writing in this Nomadica album. It's so lush and orchestral. I'm an orchestra musician. It's my full-time job. I was curious, have you written for orchestra down that direction?

Carla Patullo:

Yeah, that's something I've been getting into. After I got off the road with Sandra, I did go to do a program at Berklee for their film scoring, and it was a real crash course, and the orchestra, I was pretty intimidated. But then I did my first project and they make you conduct it, which was like, I was also mortified to do that. But when you get up there and there's this room of amazing musicians playing your music, and it just all comes to life, just I was just like, I loved it. I loved it. And I also love when I'm learning. I love to learn, and I feel like orchestral working with orchestras, there's so much to learn about every instrument, and I love that, and I love continuing to do that and bringing that into my scores as much as possible. Especially like an orchestra when there's a budget, right?

Leah Roseman:

So thanks so much for this today, Carla. I really appreciate it.

Carla Patullo:

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It's really been fun.

Leah Roseman:

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at LeahRoseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support the series, that would be wonderful. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. The podcast theme music was written by Nick Kold. Have a wonderful week.