ABOUT ME
Jolie is a long time lover of music and performance. She began her career almost 15 years ago through Playmakers of Baton Rouge, a community theatre that provides numerous performance and tech opportunities for young Thespians. Between the ages of ten and eighteen, Jolie participated in almost fifty different shows and hundreds of performances through the Talented Theatre Program in school and community theatre with Playmakers and Theatre of Baton Rouge. She attended Baton Rouge Magnet High School, where she took theatre classes, ballet classes, and directing classes. Jolie also discovered her love of music and songwriting after picking up and teaching herself the piano, ukulele, and guitar. She began taking voice and piano lessons at 16. She was vice president of the Thespian Club her junior and senior years, through which she attended the National Thespian Convention in Natchitoches, Louisiana. She graduated high school Summa Cum Laude with a 4.1 GPA in 2017. ​​
​That fall she began attending Loyola University in New Orleans on honors, presidential, and talent scholarships. There, she not only took courses in theatre history, performance, and set building, but she also began taking courses on music performance, writing, production, and business. She took rigorous private vocal classes with many well established musicians in New Orleans, including Donna Clavijo, Quiana Lynell, and Elizabeth Dellinger. Jolie also expanded her piano abilities through classes and private lessons on campus with Jenna McSwain and Daniel Meinecke. Loyola music courses are where she met and began playing with her bandmates in Jolie and the Drifters. She also tutored and taught music theory classes during her junior and senior years. She graduated in 2022 Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor's degree of science in Popular and Commercial Music and a minor in Theatre Arts. ​
​She released her first EP Limits in November 2022, which was recorded at Grammy-award winning Dockside Studio in Lafayette in March 2022. In fall of 2022, Jolie and the Drifters opened for the Tik Tok famous band "The Never Ending Fall" through the A&R group Breaking Sound at the Howlin Wolf. Jolie and the Drifters have also played other historical Louisiana venues such as DMACs, Carrollton Station, and Midcity Ballroom. Jolie and her bandmates have organized and put together several successful house shows hosting 100+ people, where not only music is played by an entire lineup of talented local musician but also food, drink, jewelry, and art was sold by local vendors. She continues to gig throughout New Orleans with Jolie and the Drifters and now teaches voice lessons to aspiring singers and performers. Jolie and the Drifters are currently working on their second album.​
Jolie is also a lover of cats, pit bulls, pickles, crawfish, purple, glitter, crochet, and karaoke. Her go-to karaoke songs are "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton, "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, and "Killing Me Softly" by Roberta Flack, famously covered by the Fugees. Jolie has two cats named Merlin and Willow. She is a very vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, POC rights, Palestinian rights, and climate change policies. Jolie loves writing songs most about female empowerment. She's ready to challenge anyone at anytime to a gumbo cook-off. She will win by a landslide.
Notable Performances and Experience
April 2011
First performance with Playmakers of Baton Rouge as an ensemble member in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
2011-2016
Several years of performing with Playmakers. Some of Jolie's favorite shows with Playmakers include Suessical the Musical (Gertrude), Beauty and the Beast ("Silly Girl"), Shrek the Musical (teen Fiona and ensemble member), Cinderella (ugly stepsister), Into the Woods (narrator), The Little Mermaid (mersister), Godspell (ensemble member), and Alice in Wonderland (Alice) just to name a few. She also choreographed Tom Sawyer the Musical with Playmakers in 2015.
2013-2017
Years of attendance at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. Jolie took several performance classes, including Ballet and Talented Theatre. Some of Jolie's favorite shows through the BRH theatre program include Chicago (Velma), Romeo and Juliet (Juliet), Necessary Targets (Zlata), Art (Mark), Fame (Miss Sherman), Blithe Spirit (Elvira), and Tartuffe (Elmire) just to name a few. Her senior year, she also co-directed a stage-play adaptation of the movie Clue, and solo directed the straight play Mr. Marmalade.
2017-2022
Years of attendance at Loyola University in New Orleans. Jolie spent her first three semesters studying musical and technical theatre. Midway through her sophomore year, she switched majors to Popular and Commercial Music. She took a gap year for the 2020-2021 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but resumed fall 2021 and graduated in May 2022. Through Pop Com, she took a variety of music and business classes, including music production, computer coding, private voice all eight semesters, jazz acapella ensembles, songwriting, music marketing, music management, music theory, and piano (both private and in a class setting) just to name a few. Through her ensemble courses, a class in which students are placed into and rehearse with bands including both singers and instrumentalists based on auditions, Jolie had the opportunity to perform at the historical venue Tipitina's in New Orleans on three occasions. She began tutoring music theory her sophomore year and substitute taught for music theory during her junior and senior years. She won an award for "most outstanding senior" before graduation.
2021-present
Jolie and the Drifters' first performance was spring 2021. Since then, they've gotten the opportunity to headline at several popular and historical music venues in New Orleans, including Howlin' Wolf, DMAC's, Carrollton Station, and Gasa Gasa. They released the EP Limits in November 2022, a five-song album consisting of completely original music. They've also had the opportunity to play for wedding events and fundraisers. The Drifters are currently working on their second album, which they hope to release by the end of 2025. The band has also partnered with other New Orleans bands to arrange and put on several backyard shows, their most successful event being a Halloween show in 2021 in which a lineup of six bands performed. Vendors sold art, jewelry, homemade gumbo and chili, and a variety of drinks. A couple hundred people were in attendance.
2023-present
Jolie begins teaching freelance voice lessons to singers of all ages. She also begins a residency with Jolie Cocktail Bar in downtown New Orleans singing with her guitar player Dylan Nails on every third Thursday from 5-8pm.
