Jill Wisoff

Jill Wisoff is an American film composer, songwriter, and actress, born in Queens, NY. She holds a B. A. in theater from Bennington College and an M. F. A. in Writing with a concentration in fiction from the New School. Living in the Bronx prior to two years in Frankfurt, Germany, while her physician father completed his army service, she completed first grade in Miami, eventually settling on Long Island with her parents and two siblings. She played flute and piccolo in Herricks public school marching bands, studied voice and composition in Manhattan School of Music's preparatory division, and taught folk guitar at Connecticut's Buck's Rock Work Camp. Her professional acting career began in musical stock at Long Island's Gateway Playhouse as company member and children's theater director. After attending the Neighborhood Playhouse, she performed in the Rocky Horror Disco Show in clubs of the era, including Ice Palace and Les Mouches, as a formative member of Creatures of the Night. She appeared in Obie-winning Theater for the New City's street theater while assistant to the producers, and in various productions off-off Broadway, including Leonard Melfi's Rosetti's Apologetics at TNC. As lead guitarist in bands during the burgeoning NYC punk scene, she eventually joined the all-girl reggae group Steppin' Razor in the early eighties while moonlighting as bassist in the New York Frets, a tristate country cover band. Her musical Phantom of the Disco was staged at the New York Theater Ensemble where she later directed Joan Crawford's Children, an ensemble piece created with an improvisational group. Introduced to NYU teaching assistant Todd Solondz, whom she music-assisted on an early film short, she would act and compose for his first feature films. In 1989 she toured as bassist and back-up singer in Johnny Thunders band, known as the Oddballs, throughout Europe, Canada, and the Midwest. In the Nineties, she was dramaturg and director of Southern playwright Stephen Jackson's debut production of Lethal Dose: 100 at American Theater for Actors, which won the Jean Dalrymple award, performed extensively with indie band The Con Artists, and continued to score for film and television. Into the new millennium, she script doctored and wrote screenplays for various producers, before her film directorial debut with Creating Karma.