Meet Tori Letzler of Tori Letzler Music in Santa Monica

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tori Letzler.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Tori. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’ve been in the music/entertainment industry almost my entire life. At age 9, I started singing with the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Choir in NYC until the age of 13. After that, I quite literally ran away with the circus at age 14, joining Cirque Du Soleil’s touring show “Quidam” as the lead character/vocalist “Zoe”. I toured internationally with Cirque for 2 years before going back to high school in NYC for my senior year. Although I was a performer for most of my childhood, I was constantly writing music and my keyboard became my best friend on the road. I started playing piano at the age of 4 and while I had stopped taking lessons as a teen, I continued to write songs and long improvised suites. I had always had a fascination with film music, becoming obsessed with Danny Elfman’s “Nightmare Before Christmas” at a really young age, so my music always strayed to a darker more cinematic place.

I ended up at Berklee College of Music and that’s where I decided, I wanted to try and pursue Film Scoring as a career. After three years there and an internship in LA, I decided to drop out and try my luck out west. Shortly after moving, I got an internship at Remote Control Productions (Hans Zimmer’s studio) and the rest is history. I worked my way up from an intern, to a runner, to an assistant and became a frequently used vocalist for many of the composers under the RCP roof. Although I am now entirely a freelance composer and vocalist, I still work frequently with many of the composers there. Most recently singing the main titles for Batman v Superman, (scored by Hans) and singing on Wonder Woman (scored by Rupert Gregson-Williams).

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to have a smooth road when pursuing scoring as a career. You really have to work your way up and even as you get closer to the top there is still an insane amount of blood, sweat, and tears that pour into your work every day. This industry quickly weeds out those who don’t want to be in this for the long haul and it’s not for the faint of heart. I have lived in LA for just over 6 years and I’m only now just starting to feel like, I’ve made some real headway toward my own career. I have been really fortunate to learn from and work with some of the biggest composers in town and getting to be a fly on the wall around many of them has been the best class I could have asked for.

I have to add, as a female composer I feel like I often have to push through an extra wall. Earlier on in my career, I dealt with my fair share of harassment and even now, I still feel like my intelligence and capacity to carry out a job is still questioned frequently. It’s often an uphill battle to be taken seriously when there are very few women involved in those conversations at the top.

Please tell us about Tori Letzler Music.
I am both a composer and vocalist for many forms of visual media including film, TV, Video games, and trailers. I have become known for my ability to easily improvise vocals on a score, and my ability to sing across genres. Being a composer myself, I have a full studio setup and often times self-record vocals for a score. This saves the composer a lot of time and allows them to keep working on the project while I record what they need.

I think what sets me apart is the fact that I am both a vocalist and a composer, and more often now I get hired on projects to do both. I also frequently work as a team with my composer fiance Steven Richard Davis. We work incredibly well together and have a great understanding of each other’s music. We have different musical strengths but take similar approaches to scoring, so working together is often incredibly productive.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I honestly wouldn’t want to do anything differently. I am a firm believer of “everything happens for a reason”, I worked my way up sometimes working 4 jobs at a time, being absolutely broke and exhausted but it made me tough and showed me how much I truly wanted this. I am thankful for all of the people I have met and worked with along the way and I can say everything I’ve gone through has led me to be the artist I am today.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.toriletzler.com
• Instagram: @toriletzler
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toriletzlermusic/
• Twitter: @ToriLetzler

Image Credit:
Brian Tyler, Steven Richard Davis, Emma McIntyre

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