This Jersey Girl is Working Her Way From Grammy Member to Winner

(Flanders, N.J.) — In February 2025, singer-songwriter Isabella Dussias attended her first Grammy Awards as a voting member. She was 22 years old, wearing a sparkly champagne dress that she had purchased at Jan’s Boutique in Cherry Hill. She earned her seat in the audience through a lottery, and watched as the country’s biggest stars took to the stage. She was surrounded by her greatest inspirations in music that night. She met Grammy-winning artist Madison Cunningham in the lobby and gazed in awe as  indie singer-songwriter Clairo walked past her seat.

Dussias had been recommended for a Grammy-voter membership by Shelby Lock, an audio engineer and recording academy governor for the Chicago chapter. Each recording academy member has a limited number of recommendations, and Lock chose Dussias as one of hers. The process involved submitting music samples and letters of recommendation, which were in review for several months. “Obviously, I’d always watch that show as a kid and wanted to be there my whole life,” Dussias tells me, now a year later. “I can’t even put into words how cool that was.”

She says the easiest part of being a musician is making connections with other people passionate about music. The hardest part is making a living. Streaming isn’t lucrative, and artists make, on average, a fraction of a cent per stream on Spotify. “There’s so much talent out there,” she says. “It’s hard to cut through everybody who is writing incredible songs.”

Since December 2025, Dussias has worked full-time as an executive event coordinator at Software House International, an information technology company, which provides infrastructure for more than 17,000 organizations. On the side, she continues to pursue her music career, performing at popular New Jersey venues like The Stone Pony and The Rock Shack.

The day before we met, the singer-songwriter performed her music at The Rock Shack in Somerville, New Jersey, with her seven-piece band — two guitarists, plus a drummer, keyboard player, harpist, and an electric violinist. Her setlist began with “Sugar” and “Tide,” two of her most popular songs, and included covers like “Kiwi” by Harry Styles and “Them Bones” by Alice and Chains. The band also played some of Dussias’ unreleased songs: “Control” and “Sit in my Comfort.”

The morning after the show, we meet on a misty March morning at the Bridgewater Cafe on Union Avenue. Dussias arrives in a beige sweater with a scalloped turtleneck and a silver chain holding a small, shiny pendant. Her chestnut locks billow around her shoulders, framing a constant smile. Throughout our hour-and-a-half long conversation, she appears relaxed, her hands wrapped around a vanilla latte in a mason jar. Her voice is clear and soothing, like the hum of conversation around us.

Dussias and her band play local New Jersey and New York venues. [Credit: Sarah Brown]

Dussias was something of a child prodigy growing up among the gardens and farmland of Hillsborough where she attended Immaculate Conception School (ICS). At age 4, she started playing music by ear on a toy piano that she had received as a gift. Within two years, she was taking piano and violin lessons. She also took classical ballet training for eight years, practiced jazz tap, and sang in the choir. 

The Dussias family played music often on car rides and in their home on weekends. Her mother, Renee Dussias, is an internal medicine physician. Her father, Peter Dussias, is an independent consultant for pharmaceutical companies. Both parents listened to artists like Kate Bush, Pat Benatar, and Neil Young. They noticed their daughter’s talent early on. “We’ve known Isabella has been something special, and extremely talented since a very young age. She’s never ceased to amaze us,” says Renee. “It’s been our journey to support her artistic capabilities.”

As a teenager, Dussias spent her leisure time gardening, going to Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, and reading. Her intellectual curiosities mirrored her music — she loved reading the classics and historical dramas, and her favorite book is “Emma” by Jane Austen. She admits she wasn’t the best student. She would frustrate her piano teachers by changing the notes she played for the more difficult segments of certain songs. But this led to her writing her own piano solos, for small ensembles and eventually for an orchestra. At 11, she composed her first piece for orchestra and was film scoring at age 13. By high school, she could play the piano, violin, French horn, clarinet, and flute.

The first song she wrote was titled “Hold On.” “We had an eighth grade talent show at ICS,” Dussias says. “The whole school and parents would come. I was going to play a solo piano thing that I had written, but around this time I was getting more interested in singing and trying to write my own stuff at home.” Her mother told her that she should write a song for the show, which Dussias refused at first, stating that she was an instrumentalist with her eyes fixed only on classical compositions. Renee did not give up. The two worked together on the concept for the song: friendship and moving on to a new chapter of life. Dussias opens the song, singing “Seems so long ago, we started out side by side, unsure we’d figure it out.” Her friends sat around her on a stage in an old gym, like she was playing to them. “It was a very movie-like moment,” she says.

In 2016, she started entering film scoring competitions. She won the 2020-2021 Marvin Hamlisch International Music Award for musical theatre composition in the youth division. After graduating from Notre Dame High School, she enrolled at one of her only two choices for college, NYU Steinhardt. “I always wanted to live in New York,” she says. “I would go and see Broadway shows and be enamored with everything about the city.” 

Dussias graduated in May 2025 with a degree in music theory and composition with a concentration in film scoring. Throughout her time at NYU, she learned how to score short films. While on campus and at home on the weekends, she carved out time to write her own music. “In practice rooms at Steinhardt, I would lug my guitar and my recording console and my mic in a bag and record,” she says.

Dussias enjoys spending time in nature, which appears in the art of her EPs. [Credit: Yoona Hong]

Some songs have taken her only half an hour to write. Others, a week. She produces all of her own music and has a clear vision of what she wants. As a member of Broadcast Music, Inc., a leader in music rights management, she says she’s thankful to have been mentored by other BMI members in New York, as well as friends in the music industry in Los Angeles. “My very first composition teacher, who I owe everything to, is in Australia,” she says.

Before every show, Dussias avoids dairy, prays, and runs through the setlist in her head while packing equipment into her car. She uses her pre-show nerves to build her excitement for the performance, and within 30 seconds of her first song, her fear has dissipated. It helps to chat with her friends and family in the front row as she and her band set up the stage.

She loves connecting with the environment, which influences both her artistic vision and fashion choices — she wears geodes as jewelry and carries bags made of wood. Nature features in many photos of her and on the cover art of her EPs including “Horizon,” “Mirrored Emotions, “and “Familiar Paths on Foreign Ground.” These images show Dussias seated in a grassy field, on the edge of a garden pond, and crossing a bridge over a glistening river. She calls it “authentic visual branding.” If she’s in a place where she loves to be, she’ll take a picture.

Dussias sometimes has difficulty unpacking her emotions in her music. “I get lost in the weeds a little bit, which is a cool effect to say something without directly saying it,” she says. “But I want to be more comfortable with saying what I wish.” She wants to experiment with new instruments and production styles like recording on tapes and vintage processors with her synthesizer. She hopes that her taste will evolve organically.

Despite having questioned the realities of a music career, Dussias has never considered quitting music. She has entertained the thought of becoming an environmental scientist, but she can’t see herself actually pivoting from her dream. “I will always want to play. I will always want to gig live. I’ll always want to release music,” she says. “I will do it until I see it through. I will be performing and releasing music to some capacity for my entire life.” 

Dussias would like to travel more.  Her wish list includes  Scotland, Ireland, and the English countryside.  She wants to be remembered as an artist who brought a smile to people’s faces, providing joy wherever she goes. Someone who allows everyone to be themselves. She wants to reach as many people as she can with her music, to help them reflect on something they’re going through and to relate to her own stories.

“There’s so much good talent out there,” she says. “Let’s be authentic and loud about it.”