Meet Gemma Castro of Los Angeles

I was born in Long Beach and raised in Lakewood. I’ve been obsessed with music for as long as I can remember. In high school, I began to wonder about music production. I had an uncle in Guadalajara who was a music producer and produced for lots of influential Mexican alternative rock bands like Azul Violeta and Porter. I would go to Guadalajara a lot growing up and was always so inspired by the scene there. Back at home in California, as a teen I mainly did visual arts and enjoyed creating worlds that way.

After high school, I worked at Fingerprints Music, a record store in Long Beach and started recording my own music. A couple years in, I had joined a couple bands and was playing lots of shows and was releasing my own music. As time went on, I really craved to learn more about composition and music production. I was inspired by people like Ennio Morricone and Mike Dean, and I wanted to learn what they knew. Playing songs on my synth and singing in bands just didn’t feel like enough for me.

When I was 25, I enrolled at CalArts and got my bachelor’s degree in Music Composition while interning at Stones Throw Studios and Women’s Audio Mission. After graduating, I worked on many records as an engineer and musician at Stones Throw and won a Grammy for working on NxWorries’ “Why Lawd?” album in 2025. These days, I’m focusing on composing and producing my own music. I finally feel at a place where I have the focus and skills to make the kind of music I was thinking about back when I was just a fan girl in high school. The kind of music I was craving to make when I was playing shows and working at a record store.

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?

In a way, my obstacles and challenges have been my favorite parts of my journey. It’s what has made it so exciting. I think the fact that I have a strong vision and independent spirit has created challenges for me. Early on in my career, I was approached by individuals who offered to produce me as a musical artist, but I never accepted. I never felt comfortable giving up the creative reins on my music, because I had my own musical vision and I really wanted to do exactly that. I wanted to make the music that I dreamt of, and that has taken lots of time, learned skills, and my own hard earned money.

Sometimes I think that my journey thus far could have been easier if I was more loose with my vision for my career and able to hand things over a bit more. I’m learning that I can’t do everything myself, but I am still protective of my vision and want to be involved in most things. My art and my music has always been my sanctuary, my space where I feel beautiful. It’s a place I always want to protect and the fact that it means too much to me can be a challenge.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do? 

I am a composer, recording artist, and audio engineer. At the moment, all of my professional work involves working with sound and music. As a composer, I imagine, design, and create pieces of music. At times, I will work fully digitally on my computer, and other times I will write out scores and record music acoustically. I personally love mixing the two mediums and creating compositions with electronic as well as acoustic elements. A lot of the new music I have been working on has been made this way, mixing string orchestra with 808 drums and chopped samples. It’s really a lot of fun and satisfying to me.

 What sets you apart from others in your field? Where can we find more about your work?

I think something that sets me apart from others in my field is my background in visual arts. Throughout high school, I was drawing and painting very seriously and thought I would pursue that. During this time, I began to think critically about the kinds of images I wanted to create. What I wanted to manifest in the world with my imagination. I learned about tone, saturation, light, and space. I also learned that there were certain colors and themes that I gravitated to. When I’m composing, and especially when I’m mixing, I hear and think about each of these aspects as well as the larger picture of the music I’m working on.