Well, Grammy week 2012 has come and gone and left me completely exhausted! As you can guess it’s a big week in music here in LA – tons of networking events that have you dressing up, running around and meeting a million people. I kind of loved it
Here are a few photos from the week! I had the opportunity to attend the Planet LA/ VH1 Save the Music Foundation Pre-Grammy Party on Thursday, the Renaissance/HMMA Pre-Party Saturday and the Rolling Stone After Party on Sunday!
As for the actual award ceremony, I’m making my way there, I’m making my way…
Loved all of Adele’s wins – he is amazingly talented and her album is equally amazing.
SO sad about Whitney Houston… she is a musical icon and I will always associate her and a couple of other beautiful women singers with the beginning of my love of song. I’ll get into that in another blog…
Wait wait, we’re 29 days into the new year and I haven’t posted yet?
Shameful!
Well if anything you know I’ve been busy. But before I back track, let’s start with today!
Starting at 2pm I will be dancing as a part of Penn State Los Angeles Alumni’s Hollywood Dance-A-THON with my friend Matt, who is a PSU alum. What is THON, you ask? Great question. It’s like running a marathon for charity, but instead you raise money and promise to dance for hours and hours straight! This yearly event (with the main event hosted at PSU for a full 46 hours…we only dance 6 here in Hollywood) is a very familiar and important one to my family, as the fundraiser is to raise money for pediatric cancer research and awareness. As some of you may know, my family lost my beautiful six year old cousin Tyler to neuroblastoma in 1997. His sister, my cousin Megan, has been participating heavily in this event for years. This is the first year that I have had the opportunity to participate and I am so excited to do so.
To read more about this cause and to donate money, please visit THIS WEBSITE - I’m pushing all donations to Matt’s page!
It seems to have been a Penn State themed week for me – I think last night was the only day of the week that I didn’t see at least one PSU alum…I am not one myself (UArts baby!) but as it a big school for my family and a lot of my friends (not to mention the many many weekends I spent there in college), between THON, JoePa, football, crazy travel stories to get there and the giant margaritas at Mad Mex, there was a lot of blue and white chatter going on.
Penn Sate is usually known for all of those things – football, parties and post-party-pizza…but what it should be known for is the work it has done with the largest student run philanthropy in the world. They’ve raised over 78 Million dollars benefitting the Four Diamonds Fun at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital.
I plan to live stream a little bit from the event on my phone if I have decent enough cell reception – we’ll be dancing from 2-8pm pacific and you can access my UStream page HERE.
Have a wonderful rest of your weekend everyone, and thank you in advance for your donations!
“When they say ‘We Are Penn State,’ this is what they are talking about.” – Joe Paterno
(For more info about THON and how to get involved, visit www.thon.org)
Well well well… another year gone by… (insert comment about how time flies here)
One day until 2012 – I’ve got myself a little year end cold so I’m hoping to wrap that up along with the end of this year!
It’s been big year for me as you know – relocating to Los Angeles, the HMMA nomination, music videos and other fun stuff.
Do you mind if I jump around a bit? I thought it might be more fun than going in chronological order…I promise to follow some kind of order, but let’s do some jumping first, shall we?
In August I had the opportunity to act in a music video for Disney/Pop star Drew Seeley – it was a blast! (You may know him from High School Musical, Another Cinderella Story and other fun flicks.)
Here’s a photo with Drew, the cast and crew and the final product!
Also in August (and September) I did some background work for CSI: NY, CSI: Miami and Good Christian Bells.
A few of the people I had the pleasure of meeting along the way or working with…
Some show pics from the year…
I started out the year on the road – in the snow – on a southern tour. The snow literally followed me the whole way down through Nashville and Atlanta, where they had a record breaking ice storm. Getting to Louisville was a challenge – apparently they don’t salt the roads in Cincinnati and truthfully, after driving through blustery snow for a while it starts to look like a scene from Star Wars. Since I was going south I didn’t bother to pack my snow boots – foolish – but my cowboy boots really lived up to the job!
Nashville was awesome – I met some incredibly talented musicians and look forward to returning there sometime soon to do some writing!
In February I made my way out to Los Angeles for a two week stint of shows there and San Diego. Also to do a little apartment hunting
On April 14th I performed on NBC’s The 10! Show to promote my Bon Voyage Show at the Tin Angel which was held that same night. That show’s turnout was incredible – one of my favorite performances to date for sure. Thank you to everyone who was there!
I went out to LA one more time again before making the move (literally a week later) – it was my second time at the ASCAP Expo and I thoroughly recommend it for indie artists looking to network and learn about the business of their craft.
A week later was the big road trip (find that blog and photos HERE)
Since living on the west coast I’ve had the opportunity to explore my hobby of photography a bit – I posted a few blogs about that as well, which you can find HERE and HERE….
Here’s a little look at it…
While back home in September I wrapped up filming for the Hide Music Video – final product coming soon It was awesome working with Jonathan and Mike again.
I have absolutely loved living in Los Angeles and getting to know the area and the artists who live there. I’ve been writing with other songwriters (songs like THIS ONE!)
It hasn’t all been work and no play though – I have loved having visitors and doing fun things like taking a road trip to San Francisco, seeing the Phillies beat the Dodgers (sorry Dodger fans), hiking the Hollywood Hills and taking tours of Hollywood!
November brought filming for the Water Rising Music Video as well as the Hollywood Music and Media Awards. Both were excellent experiences – if you click on those links you can see the blogs about those as well! Getting to walk the red carpet for the first time as a nominee was really special and fun.
I rounded out the year back in Philly for a show at World Cafe Live and for holidays with my family. It certainly has been a whirlwind year and I am so happy to get to share it with you all! Thank you always for your support and encouragement – here is to another year of grand adventures in 2012!!
Merry Christmas Everyone! Just a couple of things to add to your holiday cheer – first off, two free downloads of Christmas tunes sung by yours truly – just visit www.soundcloud.com/mary-scholz and click the download arrow right next to “add to set.”
The song “A Silent Noel” was arranged and sung by myself and my sister Hilary!
Also, here are videos from last week’s concert at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia.
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, no matter what you are celebrating!
Well, we had our day of underwater filming – and I do believe it was a success!
First of all, I should explain that the dreams I had that brought on the song I wrote that we are now turning into a music video ALSO brought about a bit of an issue for me when it comes to water. Usually that issue is only a problem in the ocean, but much to my surprise, when we started working under water in the pool for the shoot, I got a bit panicky! My crew and awesome fellow actor helped me through the work and I am really excited to see how everything turned out.
Special Thank You goes out to the Richardson Family for opening their home and heating their pool…and to Brian and Nima who spent so much of the windy December day in the water with me!
And of course thanks to my crew – Sarrahh, Nick, Chris and Eric!
Here is a video I put together as well as photos from the day! Obviously it’s a pool…but the end effect should be like swimming in the ocean…
Well last week we started filming the “Water Rising” music video…had a few hiccups to start out, but ended up with a beautiful day for filming!
(Someone asked about the plot of the video…well the song is about a reoccurring nightmare I have involving a tidal wave and being ripped away…so in short, that’s also what the video is about! It’s part of a two video series, beginning with the video for “Hide” – yet to be released – where I find myself from one dream into another, this time the scarier one, where I am on what looks like a beautiful cliff but what really lies ahead is imminent danger…)
On Saturday we’ll be doing the underwater sequence – totally new territory for us all, so it should be … interesting… and eventful
Here’s behind the scenes scouting locations as well as the first … two … days of filming and some pictures! Enjoy
The Good Year Blimp made a guest appearance on scouting day…
The rainy day where we DIDN’T film…
AND finally the day that we DID…
The day was not without casualties though…we had to climb down a pathway to reach the rocks where we filmed part of the video…and there was definitely a cactus attack along the way…
I can’t wait to share the finished product with you!!
Well, it came and went already – how fast is this year going?!
Last Thursday was the 2011 Hollywood Music and Media Awards. I had the privilege of being nominated in the category of Adult Contemporary for my song “Tennessee” and had a blast walking the red carpet for the first time as an award nominee!
I didn’t win but it was awesome just to be nominated and get to participate in the event. Here are a few photos and a video from the evening! Enjoy!
With Adam Gaynor of Matchbox 20
Updated 12/1/11: This interview was just posted from RunHollywood.com … !
So while I was back east for my birthday and my amazing photographer’s wedding, we did the second day of shooting for the “Hide” music video!
These scenes involve the forrest and me barefoot in a long dress – I loved every minute of it. Even if the ground was muddy and there were rocks everywhere
Jonathan Rola is back directing this video with Michael Leary as Director of Photography. I love working with that team. This shoot we also had Sam there helping out and lending me a hand any time I needed help getting down a slippery slope – or throwing me over his shoulder to lift me down from a dangerous ledge!
We filmed off of Forbidden Drive in Wissahickon Valley Park – it was beautifully overcast with occasional rays of sunshine – so basically perfect for the look we were hoping to achieve.
Here are some photos from the day! (Click on the word “Hide” to listen to the song!)
It’s 4:47am – I’ve been up since 12:47am, so exactly four hours since I walked into “I can’t sleep” town. It’s very quiet here.
I’ve been kicking around on my computer, hoping it would tire out my eyes and I would go back to sleep, but I think it’s just waking me up.
There’s a buzzing here – grasshoppers or some sort of summery sound. Also someone’s air conditioner which is bizarre because it’s so cool outside. The moon showed up in my back yard which is funny to see because it was in the front yard before I went to bed. That was a short lived event.
I’ve been looking through photos of actors and musicians on their websites and facebook pages. Mine included. There is this re-occuring theme of “look at the most beautiful photos of me.” Poised, graceful, intriguing, beautiful. I love posting photos like these. But the more I’m looking at all of these beautiful people the more I’m realizing that we’re forgetting to share in the fact that we all have not-so-beautiful moments. Not beautiful by our standards, anyway. We want to show that our lives are wonderful and that we feel grateful and blessed for all that we have. And it is true for me – I feel grateful and blessed for all that I have in my wonderful life. But that doesn’t mean that life isn’t hard sometimes. Sometimes it’s downright ugly. Sometimes we don’t feel beautiful. Sometimes I’m afraid that if I write a song that doesn’t show off how beautiful my life is, you will judge me as being ungrateful for all that I have.
But then I remember that you have those days too. Days that make you sad, angry, confused, afraid. But know that those things are not ugly. They do not make you ugly. They tie us together. It is what is special about being a songwriter. Yes, I have to promote my work with photos that make listening appealing…but the heart of it is the music that hopefully makes us connect to each other. We need that most when we are sad.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, on the days when you don’t think you’re beautiful, just remember that I do.
