Jean-Marc Pisapia

Jean-Marc Pisapia (born 13 November 1957) 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.

Early life

Born in Montreal, Pisapia learned piano from the age of four and grew up listening to progressive rock. 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.

Pisapia's father immigrated to Canada from Naples, Italy in 1952. His older brother, Guy, was the keyboardist for the first iteration of The Box.

Career In 1981, Men Without Hats frontman Ivan Doroschuk invited Pisapia to be a keyboardist on their summer tour. That same year, Pisapia formed a band, originally called Checkpoint Charlie, which was renamed The Box.

Pisapia serves as The Box's lead vocalist and principal lyricist. 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.

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. Pisapia later formed his own music production company, which he named L'Affaire Dumoutier, after The Box's first hit single. 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.

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. The new iteration performs songs in a progressive rock style.

Personal life Pisapia started painting in 2009 after moving from Montreal to a rural area of Quebec known as the Laurentides. He joined a collective of artists and opened two art galleries in Mont-Tremblant.

Pisapia has two daughters.