Today we’d like to introduce you to Sophia Rollando.
Hi Sophia, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My love of music starts well before I was born. I think my journey in music started in 1964 and 1965 when my Mother and Father were born. Two music loving individuals destined to meet and create 2 musicians, my brother and myself. My Father was music obsessed born in France, and my Mother born in Pennsylvania. Together they kept a very musical household. I was listening to music well before I entered the world, and I always like to say that I came out singing. Music and my love of it and need to create and perform was pretty much the first thing I knew about myself as a human. There has always been this feeling in my bones and in my veins, and I know that feeling is music and the passion I have to create it. Over the years growing up, my Mother always encouraged me to perform anytime guests were in the house, and my parents put me in music lessons. Voice has always been my main instrument, but guitar was my first tactical instrument to accompany myself. The Beatles were my first love, and I would cover their songs on guitar, often coming up with my own renditions of their songs. When I was 12 or 13 years old was when I wrote my first song. I had been staying with my Aunt Marcia while my mom was on a business trip. I remember her walking in the door and I excitedly ran up to her exclaiming that I had written two songs. Those songs were called You Never Know and A Mother To Me, and when I first played my mom those songs is when she really realized I had something. She was blown away. Ever since then, I have never stopped writing songs. There’s always the feeling inside of me that I knew meant there was a song brewing, so I would need to immediately sit down at my guitar, now my piano, and often when I was really feeling something, everything would come out all at once, lyrics, melody, chords. I continued my study of music in school. In middle school I was in drama and had lead roles in musicals such as playing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. In High school, I joined the choir and music theory classes. I remember early on in the year in that Music Theory class, the teacher allowed us to bring in original music on a Friday and several of us did. That teacher was impressed by my writing that he actually excused me from all of his curriculum for the rest of the year so that I could focus on writing music instead, which, to this day I am very honored by the gesture, but I do wish I would’ve learned more music theory at a younger age! After graduating high school, I didn’t really know what to study, so I went on to Saddleback College and started studying business, I realized I had barely been singing or writing music anymore, so I spoke to my parents about letting me switch my major from business to music. That was the best decision I have ever made for myself. I was so happy in the music program. I studied classical music at Saddleback for two years, performing Italian arias, dictating drum patterns in my musicianship class (which I sucked at and probably still do), and taking theory classes with my favorite Professor ever, Dr. Weston. In the beginning of that class I was 1 of 20 or so students and I was failing theory. I remember Weston telling us that one day a lightbulb would switch on in our heads, and suddenly theory would make sense. He was right. I remember the day it all just made sense in his class and I felt so elated. By the end of the semester I was one of a few student in the class who passed with an A. I then transferred to Cal State LA and received a Bachelor’s of Music in Commercial Vocal Performance and graduated with Cum Laude Honors. I LOVED that program with every fiber of my being. I met so many wonderful friends and musicians and I felt like was attending Hogwarts, but for music. It truly was magical and I want to thank Ross Levinson and Steve White who were brilliant professors, who saw my talent and fought for my spot in the program, and who probably put up with a little too much of my joking around! When I graduated CSULA, I went back in to the 9-5 business world doing cold call sales job that I absolutely hated. COVID hit shortly after I graduated and I moved back to my parents house where soon my Father fell ill with cancer, and I watched him die fairly quickly within a year of his diagnosis. Seeing my Father die so young really made me realize that happiness in this life is truly all that matters because no matter how hard you work, how high up in a company you may be, how much money you make- it can all be taken away in an instant. So, I decided to try to put my musical skills to the test. I reached out to a friend, mentor, and celebrity vocal couch, Dave Stroud, who set me up to begin working and performing at Mastro’s. BIG thank you to Dave for his help starting what has become such successful, lucrative, and labor of love for me. I now perform nearly 300 shows a year both solo and with bands at a variety of different events and venues, as well as I have time in my everyday life to be in a recording studio making music and putting the depths of my soul, heart, and mind on record with people who I love so dearly and who love me back. Truly I am so grateful and happy.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has been anything but smooth and there are so many struggles I feel like that come with pursuing a music career. One of the main things is that I hemorrhage every dollar I make back into my music, which I am very grateful to be able to do, but it also can be very stressful feeling like you can’t ever save any money. But, that’s probably the least of my worries. Social media has also been the bane of my existence for a very long time, though I truly am starting to find a love of it and learning to create content that I enjoy. The birth of TikTok especially has been very difficult because my core competencies are performing live, not creating some hook to try to beg people to listen to my music. There has definitely been a “cringe-factor” that I have had to get over, but it is not easy to just be vulnerable and authentic on camera…something about it often feels false. So, it really is about finding your niche and figuring out what kind of content you enjoy making. This year I have realized that I really enjoy making little “Day In My Life: mini vlogs because my days are all different, and I really enjoy looking back on my life. Slowly, but surely, those videos have started doing better and better! With social media, its much more likely to experience a slow burn rather than hitting vitality overnight, so there’s a lot of patience that needs to go into it- which happens to be the least of my virtues. 😉 I’m working on it!!!
However, I would say my biggest struggle was learning to get over the ache for “fame and fortune” and learn to be completely authentic to myself and my music, no matter what I think he public will think. For a long time, I was making music under the name “Stella Reine” which was the pop persona I created when working with a friend and wonderful pop producer, Simon Jay. Though the music I was making with Simon was great, it just didn’t feel exactly like me, and when I tried to make videos to market it, I think it was very obvious to everyone watching that I wasn’t being myself. And if wasn’t obvious to them, it was obvious to me. It made me very depressed and I had to realize that fame and fortune are not guaranteed, and it shouldn’t be the goal either way. I took several months to be quiet, be sad, think, and I realized how grateful I was for my job, singing every night, and I also realized there’s a market for everything, but nothing is guaranteed. So, I would rather never get famous creating the music I LOVE, than never get famous creating music that wasn’t authentic to myself. Ever since this realization, I truly feel that I have come “home” in my music and I am feeling better than I ever have about what I am creating. I now work with two people I adore so much, Justin Tinucci and Noah Unterberger who are incredible people and musicians, who pour so much of themselves into my projects, and I truly feel their love of my art. I am also so grateful to Simon Jay for my beginnings, and for directing me to Justin and Noah.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Though I am a career professional singer, I would like to focus on my art, my project, PHIA. I write songs about my experiences with love and loss, and focus on being unapologetically myself. It is not easy to be human, we all mess up, hurt each other, break hearts and have ours broken, and hopefully, we all grow from these experiences. We all are Beautiful & Ugly inside, and that is ok. It is what you do with your pain, your brokenness, and ugly that sets you apart and that is what I write about.
I now write all of my music on the piano and then I head to Burbank where I record my music at It’s Everything, the studio that Justin, Noah, and others have recently built and opened. I adore spending my days there tracking real instruments such as bass, guitar, drums, piano, vocals, and oooof your girl LOVES some strings. What am I proud of? I am so proud that I just hired a 40 pieces orchestra from Budapest on several of my songs, and also brought in a string quartet and harpist to play on my music. I am proud to appreciate and be able to employ incredible musicians around the world, and I am so excited to share the songs that they have performed on making those songs even more special to me.
I definitely think one thing I am known for, especially as a career singer around OC, is my kind of “trick pony” voice. I have a very big voice like that of Janis Joplin, or Anne Wilson from Heart, and I love to perform like no one is watching. However, the energy exchange between myself and the audience is one of my favorite feelings.
I am proud to be a vessel for music. I think music transcends and it is one of the most important things the entire world. I am brought nearly to tears when I am in a room of people and it doesn’t matter where you’re from, what your skin color is, what your religious or political beliefs are, or what your social status is, when we share music, we become one. That is one of the most profound parts of this for me.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I think success is finding peace and happiness with where you are at right now, because right now is all we have. Success includes failures, but it’s the grit that it takes to continue to get up after each fall and try again, that is success. Success is believing in yourself and continuing on no matter how many people tell you no, because soooo many people will no matter how great you are.
Pricing:
- Email: [email protected] for booking private, corporate, wedding events. Price will be discussed via email!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.phiamusic.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sophiarollandomusic/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sophiarollandomusic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sophiarollandomusic
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sophia-rollando-music-mission-viejo
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/28SlmOFFqme0UP1pn9Lfh0
Image Credits
Emily Soliman- @soliman.photography
