Hi there! I am Marisa Corvo and here’s a little bit about me..
Well where do I start.. I guess from the beginning right? 
ok well here it goes.
I started READING music at 3 years old and played piano only at that point. By the time I was 6, I was in the Lucy Moses Pre- college for young musicians as a classical pianist. By the time I was about 9 years old I auditioned for the Manhattan School of Music pre college and got in with scholarship. A year later I started singing and landed myself a role on the 1998 musical tour “Annie” where I played “Pepper”..
So this all sounds like I had a good start to my career so far right? Well.. think again.. things got really overwhelming for me. I started to have panic attacks and I started to feel burnt out from all the pressures that classical piano brought me. My mother made me audition for the Julliard pre-college division and all my teachers were on the jury board at that time so all I had to do was do my best… and so I sabotaged the audition. I played snippets of the pieces and then said to the jury “well..i forgot the rest”. I walked out of that room and that was the first time I ever cursed my mom out and told her I was done with music and the piano for good.
By about 18 I attended Fordham University just on an academic scholarship with no interest in music but I soon realized that I wasn’t so done with music after all. I started to miss music and want to do it again more professionally. I started to write music- christian music that was because I worked in my church and felt there was a strong christian music influence in my life at the time and I enjoyed it. At 19, I was offered a publishing deal with Razor and Tie Records in their Nashville branch. I moved to Nashville and attended Belmont university while pursuing my pub/record deal. By the time I was 21, I started having those panic attacks again and started dealing with chronic depression and anxiety. I did not know it at the time, but I was starting to realize my sexuality and that I was in fact a lesbian. Here I had this Christian deal and had to live this christian life, and I was at a crossroads with everything because of what I had to come to terms with.
I came out to my label and they dropped me. No phone call back- no anything. They just pretended I sort of never existed ( they didn’t even send me a 1099 for that year..weird!!). My parents stopped talking to me for 3 years and I ended up having a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. After a few weeks, I came out of the hospital and drove all the way back home to NYC and never left or lived anywhere other than NYC since 2008.
I came home to such chaos and abuse as well as being knee high in debt. I lost everything. My job my family my money my life my dreams everything. I worked in a flower shop to get back on my feet where I made 40 bucks a day. From there I started to work as a dog walker in the streets of Manhattan which actually was one of the most therapeutic jobs I have ever had. Those years were healing with the animals and thats when I started to get some of my head back after all the damage I went thru. I also started therapy for an anxiety disorder that I finally got diagnosed correctly with. It was a long uphill battle and the struggle is real every day but you have to keep pushing forward and make the right choices consistently. I realized I wanted to finish my degree and so I spoke to my parents to ask them for their help and to let me live at home in order to finish my degree and they said the only way I could do that was if I agreed to go to conversion therapy for my “Gayness”. I agreed and went to meetings for 6 weeks. Obviously it wasn’t successful but I was able to go to college and live at home. Survival and finishing school was the priority and I did whatever it took to make sure I succeeded.
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Story submitted by Marisa Corvo
www.marisacorvomusic.com
www.soundcloud.com/marisacorvomusic
