Jean-Marc Pisapia | |
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Born | Montreal, Quebec, Canada | 13 November 1957
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Years active | 1981–present |
Member of | The Box |
Jean-Marc Pisapia (born 13 November 1957),[1] is a Canadian singer-songwriter and director. He is best known as the frontman of the new wave band The Box. As a director, he was nominated for Best Video at the 1989 Juno Awards.
Born in Montreal, Pisapia learned piano from the age of four and grew up listening to progressive rock.[2][3] He went to high school with musicians Ivan Doroschuk of Men Without Hats and Pascal Languirand of Trans-X and went on to study architecture at University of Montreal.[1][4][5]
Pisapia's father immigrated to Canada from Naples, Italy in 1952.[2] Pisapia has two brothers, Guy and Serge, and a sister, Christine.[2][6] His older brother, Guy, was the keyboardist for the first iteration of The Box.[7]
In 1981, Men Without Hats frontman Ivan Doroschuk invited Pisapia to be a keyboardist on their summer tour.[7][8] That same year Pisapia formed a band, originally called Checkpoint Charlie, which was renamed The Box.[9]
Pisapia serves as The Box's lead vocalist and principal lyricist.[3] He also directed several of The Box's videos.[10] In 1990, while directing the video for their single Temptation in New Orleans, he fell off a moving truck and broke his collarbone in two places.[10] Concerned about the money that the band would lose by being unable to complete the video shoot, he returned to work on it that same night.[10] His work on the video for the band's single, "Ordinary People", earned him a nomination for Best Video at the 1989 Juno Awards.[11]
After The Box's dissolution in 1992, Pisapia collaborated with bandmates Jean-Pierre Brie and Claude Thibault in writing and producing music for TV and radio commercials.[8][12] Pisapia later formed his own music production company, which he named L'Affaire Dumoutier, after The Box's first hit single.[12] Pisapia wrote and performed music for ad campaigns for such clients as Bell Canada, McDonald's, and General Motors.[12]
While Pisapia's first language is French, he prefers performing in English. He told the Toronto Star in 1986: "A lot of people sing rock in French and it seems to work very well for them. I wouldn't say it's written in the stars that you can't (sing pop in French), but that's my personal belief."[13] He also told the paper in 1987 that he was a proponent of "international pop culture," and pointed out that popular artists of the time, such as the Norwegian band A-ha and the Austrian musician Falco, also produced music in English.[14]
Pisapia reformed The Box with an entirely new roster of musicians that he met in the film industry and they released their first album in 2005.[15] The new iteration performs songs in a progressive rock style.[3]
Pisapia started painting in 2009 after moving from Montreal to a rural area of Quebec known as the Laurentides.[2][5] He joined a collective of artists and opened two art galleries in Mont-Tremblant.[5]
Pisapia has two daughters.[12]