[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Do you remember the first time you went on stage and performed in front of people as a musician?
Michael J. Epstein, Filmmaker, Writer, Musician, and Scientist: It was actually in high school when I was taking a German class. I studied German in high school. We had this competition called The Sprachfest that was kind of like a gathering of all the German high school classes in the region.
I grew up in Long Island and it was sort of a competition thing. We formed a little band in our high school German class and decided to perform a song kind of inspired by Mack The Knife (Mackie Messer) and then we kind of wrote our own lyrics about learning German and such.
Film Courage: What were your goals as a musician?
Michael: I think when I first started getting interested in playing music it was because music meant a lot to me. As a listener I really connected with a lot of artists, a lot of songs and I found that was a special way to feel, like I was understanding something about being a human and sort of existential ideas. I wanted to be able to express my own ideas that way. Because that was so important to me, I wanted to say what kind of opportunity could I take out of this to then express myself and connect with others in the same way, to create something that’s meaningful to somebody else. I started writing songs with the hopes that would make somebody else feel the same kind of connection that I felt with the artist that I enjoyed.
Film Courage: How many years was music your focus?
Michael: I started playing music, I started playing in bands, when I was about 15. I did that very seriously until I was about 40. So I guess that’s about 25 years? I would say within the context of that there were maybe about 10 or 12 years where we were trying to build a career out of it touring regularly, trying to get signed to bigger and bigger record labels, find music licensing opportunities and things along those lines.
Film Courage: What do you love about making music?
Michael: Again, I love the opportunity to just connect with people. I love the opportunity to create something that gives people some emotional response, that gives people an opportunity to listen or to understand what I’m experiencing internally, to be able to say something that is difficult…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Michael J. Epstein is a filmmaker, writer, musician, and scientist. With his production company, Launch Over, he has made theme-driven genre shorts and features that have played more than 75 film festivals and have been distributed worldwide. Prior to his film career, Michael toured and recorded with indie bands The Motion Sick, The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library, Neutral Uke Hotel, and Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling. He has also published more than 40 book chapters, papers, and abstracts in the auditory and psychological sciences and has written books on crowdfunding and the logical structures of science, mathematics, and statistics.
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