Leslie DeShazor

My guest this week is Violist/Violinist, Composer, Educator, and Dancer Leslie DeShazor.
She guides us down memory lane from being a precocious child instrumentalist to a very devoted musician and teacher.

https://lesliedeshazor.com/
https://www.facebook.com/leslie.deshazor
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/lesliedeshazor/

This podcast is sponsored by
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Jazz Alliance of Mid-Michigan J.A.M.M.
Shambones Music
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Produced by Green Bow Music

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Transcript

Tia Time with Artists, with guest Leslie DeShazor, recorded on 1/30/2021 

Tia Imani Hanna: Welcome to Tia Time with Artists, the weekly podcast where we discuss the methods, challenges, and real-life experiences of living our creative dreams. What kind of creative warrior are you? Musician? Filmmaker? Painter? Choreographer? Poet? Sculptor? Fashionista? Let’s talk about it right now. I’m your host, Tia Imani Hanna.

Tia Imani Hanna: Welcome to Tia time with Artists and my guest this week is multifaceted violist, dancer, arranger, composer, educator, Leslie DeShazor. Thank you for being with me today on the show. 

Leslie DeShazor: Thank you for having me. 

Tia Imani Hanna: We've worked together. I think I've substituted for you more times than not. We've only got a chance to work together a couple of times recently, which has been really fun because in Musique Noire, which you're one of the originating members of that group. And, usually, I get called in when Leslie is not there. So, to work on her group, which is fantastic. So, I'm glad that I've had that opportunity. And then we recently had the chance to work together with Sister Strings: Roots, Voice and Drums at the Detroit Jazz Festival last year in 2020. Anyhow, that's how we know each other. But I've always been hearing stories from all the different members of the group, how amazing a player cause I've seen you play and I know you’re playing and just how you've created all these different things from classical style to Jazz style, incorporating African dance and African rhythms and all of these different things. Tell me, how did viola come into your life? Did that come into your life first? Cause you play a little violin as well, right? 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Viola happened by mistake because I walked into the orchestra that I signed up for in sixth grade with the intention to play violin. And that even was like random, cause I don't ever remember actually wanting to play violin, but then when we got like our form that says what you could pick for your elective, there was like band, choir, orchestra, some other things. And I remember just being like excited when I saw orchestra. And so, I walked into the classroom and told the teacher I wanted to play violin. And she was like we don't have any violins left, but if you want to take an instrument home today, you can play viola. And then, basically, she was like, if you play viola, you'll get more opportunities because there usually aren't enough violists and, giving me all these like, reasons why viola would be a better option. So, I was like, okay, that sounds good to me. I want to take an instrument home today. So, I chose viola that day and the rest was like naturally, just naturally unfolded because it was something that I gravitated towards right away. And then knew from the, like that moment when I first played it, that I wanted to play for the rest of my life and be a musician. Yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: That's impressive. Was there other music in the house growing up or musicians in your family? 

Leslie DeShazor: Yes. My mother sang. My mother was like, the church singer, she sang not even as church, but she's sang for all the like kind of local stuff, local talent shows, she's sang for a lot of weddings and funerals, and she sang in church. She wasn't really like an instrumentalist in that she could play. She played piano like a tiny bit. So, we had a piano in the house when I was younger. But my mother mostly sang, and mostly in church, so yeah, but there were no other musicians. My siblings did take up band, but none of them like really stuck with it. They did the one-year thing and then they were over it. So yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: How many siblings are there? 

Leslie DeShazor: So, we have a Brady Bunch situation. There's eight of us.  But we're a blended family. So, I have two siblings who are by blood, even though I don't even like to think in those terms. We have a very close family and, yeah, there's eight of us. So, there's always a lot, a lot going on in our house, a lot of noise. I learned to really  value quiet time cause it was always loud in our house. But my parents were like really cool about letting us choose what we wanted to do. So, I never got any pushback when it was time for me to go to college and I wanted to major in music. Some of my peers did. Yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: That's good. That's rare. That's really rare. 

Leslie DeShazor: So, I didn’t even know it was a thing like, I don't even know people didn't want their kids to be musicians. just Until I got in college and I had friends who were like double majoring because their families didn't want them to just have a music degree. I get, cause my, I think my parents were just thrilled that I was doing something I love and I got accepted into a good school and I got a scholarship. I think they were just like, happy about that. They didn't doubt my decision, which I'm grateful for. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Where'd you end up going to school?

Leslie DeShazor: I went to University of Michigan. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Okay. Okay. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Yeah. So that was like, that was another one of those things that, life gave to me on a plate in a way, cause I had went to the summer institution thing and Professor Elliott was there. He was directing it and he heard me play. This was like, I think I was probably 15 or 16 at that point. And he loved my playing. He was really impressed. So, he went back and told the professor who was doing viola then, and I took some lessons with the professor when I turned 16, just took a few. So, by the time I applied for schools, I really didn't apply for many cause I knew I was going to go to U of M because I had been in contact and talked with them. Several of the faculty had heard me play at that point. And so, I did my audition and it went well. And then I got offered a tuition scholarship. Yeah. Was fortunate to be in the company of a lot of people who believed in me when I was younger and made opportunities easier for me to, to attain. Yeah.

Tia Imani Hanna: So are you like pretty self-directed. In the sense of, cause I would never even thought to contact these teachers. Or were your parents in there saying, “Call them”. Cause you know when you're a teenager? 

Leslie DeShazor: No, my parents weren't. It was really funny Tia, when I look back at some of the stuff I did as a child, as a teenager, cause I have kids of my own and like my audition, I drove myself to my audition at U of M. I don't even think my parents like really knew what it meant. I was like, I got this audition. Okay. Here are the keys. Like I drove myself. Just like walked in the school, looked for the classroom they said that the audition was going to happen in, and then I just did the audition. It's funny. Cause I had a little fender bender, like right before it happened. A little frazzled, but a lot of the things that I did, I was a really self-directed kid in general. When I saw something I wanted to do, I would be like, I'm doing that. And then would just hand my parents, like the permission slip and be like sign, and so they would sign. There was, with such a big family, I think they didn't have the time to just be like micromanaging every little thing we did. Like when I look back on that kind of stuff, now that I'm a parent, I see what it takes to parent and some kids are really independent. You don't need to be there to direct them as much. Some are… they need a lot more direction. I think I was one of the kids who didn't need as much direction. So yeah, a lot of those things that I did were follow-ups that I did on my own. Information that I shared with people I've met, here's my phone number, I’d love to take a lesson or whatever, and yeah. My private teacher at the time also helped connect me with people too. Cause she was… she had finished her PhD at U of M. So, she was hooked into that community. And she was good about telling me who I should talk to and putting me in touch with certain people too. She was really key too. Her and my orchestra teacher really helped me. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Who was that teacher? 

Leslie DeShazor: Her name was Melissa Gerber at the time. I think her last name is Nect now. Then I had Michael Andrus. He was my orchestra teacher, and we had a really funny relationship. It's amazing that he even liked me cause I was so obnoxious. I was like that kid in orchestra who was like so bored that I would just do really obnoxious things. And I remember one time he just be like, “Damn it, Leslie,” because I was always doing something like one time, I like learned the violin, the first violin part, all of it, a half step higher than it was. And so, like the whole time they were playing the melody, I was playing the melody like a whole half, like a half step higher than them. So, it sounded like…

Tia Imani Hanna: That’s terrible.

Leslie DeShazor: So, I started playing the flute melody. So, I ended up playing cello and bass when I was in orchestra cause that was just one way for me to not be bored. Because the viola parts in those high school and middle school arrangements, they're terrible. Like you're literally playing… it's like the arrangement was like, oh yeah, the viola that's right, and then just threw down a few whole notes and sent it to press or whatever. But so, the parts would be so boring and I would be sitting there like bored to death in orchestra. I think he got it, but I definitely… I did apologize to him later cause we ended up doing some, like, work together, like gigging together. I played cello for two years because I was so bored with viola. And that was funny because my sister was playing cello at the time too. And she was sitting second chair. There were like six of us and I challenged her and beat her. Because I'm so competitive I didn't even think anything of it. And then she started crying and everybody in the orchestra was saying how mean I am. I wanted that seat though. 

Tia Imani Hanna: That's terrible. It's for those listening who don't understand how challenges work in orchestra. For the people who lead each section, or the section leaders, and the first and second chair are the most important chairs in the section, or at least the… yeah, they're the leaders of the section. So, you have to have auditions for those chairs. And so, when you challenge for the chair, then you have to do like a… it's like a face-off. One person plays the part and the other person plays the part. And then you get judged on who plays it better and whoever plays it better wins the chair. So that's what that challenge is. Anyhow. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. The funny thing is I was so, like, driven. I was like, I told my sister like “That's what you get for not practicing.” But then I look back and I'm like, man. You knew I was going to challenge. You knew I was coming for that first chair like, and you’re in the way. You're sitting second. Yeah. And then I played bass for a year, also in middle school, I did a year of bass just to keep myself from being bored to pieces. But I loved orchestra, believe it or not. I did love it. And I also played in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Civic Youth Ensemble, which was really great. That was my window into the world of more competitive, more serious players. My defining, maybe not defining, but my kind of breakthrough moment of knowing, okay, now I got to work harder was when I went to Interlochen and I was in eighth grade. And I remember, cause like when you're from your like local area, like you're the best. And cause there's five people to be better than, so I was used to people being like, “Oh my God, you're so good.” And you think like you don't play off of that energy until you're not the best one anymore. And when I went to Interlochen, I did my audition and got placed last stand lowest orchestra. And I was like, ooh!

Tia Imani Hanna: Yup. Me too. [laughter]

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Dang. I thought I was somebody.

Tia Imani Hanna: First chair. I was first chair at Cass Tech's orchestra and I went to Interlochen the first time for a two-week thing through U of M. And I was in the last stand of the lower orchestra. 

Leslie DeShazor: That's the reality.

Tia Imani Hanna: Was second to last chair or something like that. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yup. That was me, but I was… I was fortunate cause I went to the eight-week program, so I challenged up and I got into the higher orchestra. And then, this is always a hilarious story to me. And to this day, I wish I would have done it differently. You had to play and then everybody had to vote. You close your eyes, then everybody would vote. And I played against this guy and I thought he played better than me. And this would have been for the second chair, highest orchestra at this point, I skipped a bunch. I don't even know how I did it, to be honest. Like I wish I had that same work ethic now. I don't even know how I did it, but yeah, this would have been for like second chair, like first stand, highest orchestra at this point. And we closed their eyes. It was time to vote and I voted against myself.

Tia Imani Hanna: Wow! 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. And the teacher was like, he pulled me aside after it was like, why did you do that? You would have won it. And I was like, I felt like he played better than me. And now, I admire my honesty in that moment, but I also was like, what kind of dumb move was that? How could you not vote for yourself? To this day  I just want to slap myself for that one. Like, okay, you would take the honesty thing too far. 

Tia Imani Hanna: It stands to say that your character was, is solid. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah, I think I was trying to prove to myself that it was something good. 

Tia Imani Hanna: It was to make up for the thing you did with your sister. 

Leslie DeShazor: Karma. But it was great for me, cause I got a chance to meet people from all over the country. There were some international students there too. I remember meeting a guy, we became friends from the Philippines and I had a little buddy from India named Ganesh who was so cool. And that gave me a window into  the bigger world. Because as a musician and, like, when you're just doing stuff locally, you can really become boxed in. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Yes.

Leslie DeShazor: I won't say I won’t talk about the level because that's a whole different can of worms. We can get to that later. But I think you don't get enough exposure to the wide world of music and musicians. And that experience gave me a glimpse, okay, this is something that is going to open up a lot of windows for me. And I met so many cool people, people to this day who I know, that I met when I was at Interlochen. And my… now my kids are at the age where like my daughter did Interlochen virtually last year. But, just to see how these things continue in how these traditions thrive, like, how vital they are to young musicians. Yeah, it was cool. 

Tia Imani Hanna: I'm so grateful for those opportunities because that's when I had time to actually practice for eight, ten hours a day or, and not mind it and like it, and learn and be the sponge and understand new things. And it's such a prime time. Cause I couldn't, I have trouble practicing for an hour straight sometimes because there's so many other things I have to do. I'm so grateful for that time. So that's fantastic that you had that because, I mean, you carry that with you.

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. And isn't it interesting though, the timing of how, like, when you're young, you have all this like energy, but then you have this wisdom of older age and those two almost never converge. If you had the wisdom now and the energy that you had younger, like you could have been such a… no we all, obviously things happen the way they should, but I just look at some of my students and I look at the youth that's on their side and how people have that saying that “Youth is wasted on the young,” something like that. It says like they can learn so much and they can do so much with so little actual work, but they don't have sometimes the ability to apply a lot of the non-written or the non-said things because they haven't experienced life in the same way yet. And then by the time we get to that point where we can actually apply those things, our technique is going down the drain, because we are not spending the same amount of time. And we're older and sometimes we start to get aches and pains and playing is not as easy as it was when we were younger. For me, I frequently get shoulder pain. When I was younger, I'd probably play with all kinds of horrible technique and I never hurt, never. Now, I got to warm up.

Tia Imani Hanna: Now where did the composition come in for you?

Leslie DeShazor: So, that's a good question. I think writing it down is where it comes in for a lot of us because we have ideas, we make stuff up, but we never document it. I know I did at least, I would make stuff up, but actually writing it out was different. Think I started writing things. Can you hear my My kids in the background?

Tia Imani Hanna: I can.

Leslie DeShazor: I started writing things when I was probably in my… officially writing it down… more in my thirties. And then with the band, Michelle [May] was like, we need everyone to write something for our projects. So, it forced my, it forced me, having a deadline to do something and solidify it. Cause I've got stuff in my music files right now that I started writing and never finished, like a lot of stuff like that, but there was no pressing need to finish it, so I just didn't. You get like in a mood and you're like, I'm going to write today and you sit down and you start writing and then, 15 minutes later, you stand up and you have a good idea and then you forget it like four days later that you were working on that. Or there've been times I've had ideas in my sleep. I'll wake up and sing it into my phone and then I'll not go back to it. So, I did a lot of that for a long time. Right now, like over the summer, I did some writing because I've really, unfortunately, I have not ever done my own projects. And this year I was like, I gotta do that. So, I did some writing. And then with the concerts that I did online, I did perform some of the music I wrote. And now I'm in the process of making time to go in the studio and actually record it. Yeah, I know. It took me a long enough, now I'm like 75. 

Tia Imani Hanna: It's the right time. When you do it is the right time because it's not ready until it's ready. 

Leslie DeShazor: True. True. 

Tia Imani Hanna: So, it's all good. Sounds good. You have the writing sickness. I have memos up the wazoo in my SoundCloud. Like, “You have a new memo.” Oh yeah. I forgot what that was. 

Leslie DeShazor: Exactly. The ideas come.  What I found is, one time somebody asked me, like, how do you practice when you have kids? Like, how do you find the time to practice and what I, what I found at least, is that it isn't that you don't have time to practice, it's that you don't always… the timing, or the timing to be creative, isn't always on your side. Because frequently, like the best ideas we get come like in the middle of the night. When you're like in the shower. They come in like sometimes with the odd times. And for me, with having children, sometimes you might have this idea and you walk out of the shower, right? Put this idea down and your kids, “Hey, you forgot to send in my permission slip for blah, blah, blah.” And then you go do that. And then now the creative, the, that mindset has gone. So, it's like having timing on your side to be able to do it when you feel it. Of course, it's different for everybody. And as we mature, our family obligations and things get bigger. And we just, like you said, we don't have the time to spend on ourselves like we would have 20 years ago. But I think I'm aware too, that it's necessary to prioritize it and sometimes even schedule it, even if you don't feel the creativity there, to just do it anyway and set aside time. And I haven't done great about that. Like I'll tell myself, okay, I'm going to set aside 15 minutes every day just to write something. just 15 minutes. You can do that, and then I just get distracted and I don't do it. But it's, yeah, it's just that prioritization of creative space. But having children makes you, it forces you more to take the time to put it in your life because you know how easy it is for days and weeks and months, and even years, to go by and you look up and you haven't done any of your own work. You've been doing everybody else's work. That's one of the blessings that's come out of this pandemic, I think is that we have time to work on things we want to work on. Because we're not like mandated to learn all this music for other people's stuff. So, it's nice. Obviously not making any money. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Yes, unfortunately. 

Leslie DeShazor: You only need that to live. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Exactly. It only grows on trees, no biggie, no big deal.

[“Leslie's Song” plays here]

Tia Imani Hanna: It'll come. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: You definitely have to prioritize. And it is. I don't have kids, but I might as well with all the little projects are always whispering in my ear. You gotta do this, you gotta do this. Even just stuff like taking care of your own house. It's there's all these things that have to be done so that your house doesn't fall apart. But if you're working and doing things, you can't do those things. And then, and then the podcast, and then I had a practice, and then there's a song that keeps coming back to my head. Oh, I gotta write that down on project number 27. So yeah, it's… I had a; I don't know if it was a con… I can't remember if it was a conversation or it might've just… it might've been an interview that I watched one time and someone had asked Bobby McFerrin how he practices and he says that he doesn't practice in the sense of every day he does a certain amount of scales or anything like that, but he does just sing every day. And even for 15 minutes, he just does something, especially when he's on tour. He just does that 15 minutes a day. So, that 15 minutes that you were talking about is definitely a feasible thing. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. I find the more that I'm doing this I feel like we have a whole period of just undoing. The undoing of a lot of convention, a lot of tradition that doesn't necessarily benefit us as people. You can take this… you can make this wider than just music. A lot of us spend a lot of time trying to imitate other people and what they did. And the imitation has its place, especially since music is a language. But if we spent half of the energy on our own voice that we spend on other people's voices, we'd be innovators and creators more than imitators. And I'm starting to look at this thing very different. I still urge my students to spend time. I'm trying to change my language. Practice. What does that mean? Okay. You devote time to sit in a particular space. You take out your music, you take out your instrument and you spend this amount of time. And we even brag about the hours. Oh, five hours. I practice this many hours, that many hours. But real meaningful, mindful attention to your craft is different than just practicing. So, I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay. How can I motivate students to play their instruments consistently? That's really what I'm trying to get them to do. Play consistently. Spend some time daily just getting to know the instrument. And I think that package is very different than being like, practice, you know, it has this negative. Sometimes it feels negative because it's a lot of stuff you don't want to play. A lot of the stuff kids are practicing they don't want to  play. They don't want to play etudes. They don't want to play scales and arpeggios. And most of the time, a lot of times, they don't even like the repertoire they're playing. And so how do you get them to… to work on stuff if they don't like what they're playing. They do it, but it's they're going through the motions, which so many of us have done over a lot of years. We've spent a whole bunch of time learning stuff we didn't even understand, let alone… not to say everything has to be fun. You don’t have to like everything, but I think we can get close when you're talking about music. Cause there's so much great music. It just doesn't make sense that we just keep doing like this one kind of boxed in way of teaching and sharing. So, I'm really starting to change my attitude towards a lot of these things just because I think that a lot of the stuff that I've latched on to didn't have a lot of benefits to me developing myself and my voice as a musician. Yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: When I think of practice, I know one of the things I used to tell my students would be, you really do have to think about it like a meditation. And I came to the idea of, it doesn't even matter what the instrument is, because you're really… your voice is what… you're trying to get your voice to come out in whatever instrument you're playing. So, even if say, for instance, you're going to be a piccolo player and that's all you're ever going to play is the piccolo, but maybe while you're playing it, maybe you're going to think of yourself as a saxophone player. And then what changes when you think of yourself as a saxophone player playing the piccolo. Are you going to play differently? So, it's really not about the instrument, but that concept of… cause if I think of myself, if I'm scatting a solo, and then I think of myself as a bass player, I'm going to sing a lot differently than if I think of myself as a flute player. It's just going to be a different sound that comes out. So, it's just a… it's a state of… it's a meditation of being that sound or being the personification of an idea of a sound. I don't know how else to say that.

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah, that makes sense.

Tia Imani Hanna: It’s the practice of being that music or inhabiting that music and trying to make that music live in some way that is identified as something that comes from you.

Leslie DeShazor: Right.

Tia Imani Hanna: Like ‘your voice’.

Leslie DeShazor: I think the overarching theme would be the mindfulness, what you do. I literally had this conversation with a student this morning about how she approaches playing, but when speaking to her, the real issue is that she's very self-doubting. I don't know who or what suggestions made her feel like she wasn't good enough, but she plays very apologetically. There isn't a mindfulness and a passion when she approaches the instrument, but she loves the instrument. That's obvious. But somewhere there's a disconnect. She hasn't been able to bridge that gap between what's inside of her and what comes from her instrument. But yeah, that idea of just envisioning or yourself in a different mental space or place and translating that onto the instrument is not something we spend a lot of time doing, cause we're always just, “I gotta practice. I gotta practice.” But in that, there's like definitely something spiritual happening and that isn't always easy to tap into. Yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Yeah. I think it's fun that the longer we play music and the longer we try to understand it, the less we know. I like that because you never get bored with it. It is so expansive. And then you also know that you're never going to master it, which keeps the humbleness in there. So, you can't ever get cocky anymore. You, I think when you're younger, you're like, “yeah, I'm the top of the line.” After a certain point you're like, “Nah, I guess not really. Not really.” And so, it's… and trying to teach that to other people is difficult, I think. Cause they don't think of it the same way. You might be the next line of teachers that is basically saying, “Hey, let's think of this as inhabiting the music instead of mastering the music.” 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Or replicating. Like, I think our approach to educating, in general, lacks real app application. When we look at things like math and English and history, science. The way that most of us learned it is very abstract, very drill, and regurgitative, but not applicative. There's a lot of concepts that we, basically, walk through every day that are math, that are science. There are a lot of things that we live, a lot of things that we do that if we really understood the history of, we’d do them better, or we wouldn't do them at all. But we don't really educate ourselves or our children in a way that sort of shows the cross disciplinary relationship of all these things. There's connections between all of the disciplines. They don't really exist separate from one another, but we learned them separately. And we put a lot of value in spitting back for the test and not a lot of value in true understanding of what you're doing. That takes longer. It requires more thought. And I don't know if the patience is there to make that happen, but I think when it comes to teaching music, I'm really trying to help students understand it better and apply it better now and not just go for the, okay, do your ‘A’ scale, do your etude, do your piece. I'm really trying to open up more possibilities to them so they can see how these things apply to them in their lives and in their instruments. So yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: All that deep thinking going on. These students must be amazing. 

Leslie DeShazor: They are. Like, but for different reasons and in different ways. I really probably teach every student differently. And even classes, like I've walked into some class situations where you can see that these kids have this strength and I play that strength up because that's what they do. Like, I've got a group that I teach over here on the East side of Detroit at the Ellington Conservatory and I taught them Blues tunes, from the beginning. They learned how to play “Duke's Place,” but we changed the key and they learned pentatonic, the E minor pentatonic, and they learned to improvise, like the first year they played and they've done a series of other blues since then. Those kids loved that. We still did the classical stuff, but that's not… I didn't go in there… that's what we have to do. My other group, and they may vary. We spend more time learning pop tunes and traditional beginning violin tunes, dance with them more, and sing with them more, because that's just the vibe that we get in that particular setting, I have students who they love the rigor of a tradition and so, I stick with the things that they thrive on. And I've got some students who need, like, less structure. So, I try to bend to that. I've got one little student who's eight who is just like all about the Blues. And so, he spends the majority of his time on that. And we, I keep one classical piece in his rep just because I know he's going to want to do auditions and things. But the students, they grow how they're going to grow. I think what I've realized is, I'm just a vessel, I'm not here to like mold them or make them into anything that I want them to be. And they have to be, they have to be ready for whatever it is that you're showing them. That knowledge is not going to stick unless they're ready for it. And so, I just try to be perceptive and meet them where they are, and then try and get them to rise above that, more on their terms than mine. And that's not always easy because I come from a background where that tradition is expected. You do your Flesch scales, you do the arpeggios, you do a Kreutzer etude, and you do one challenging piece that is the classical origins. None of my teachers were making me do like blues pattern scales, or making me like, make up my own songs. I make students… there's some students, I have them do that. Like one student, instead of making her do scales, I have her pick up pattern and she used to take it through the keys because I want her to be able to play fluently in every key, going in scales up and down. That's good, but it's not really doing anything super useful for her. In her current life, what she needs as a violinist, the other exercise is more useful. And the honest to God truth is she probably doesn't practice more than 45 minutes a day. For her, going through the patterns in different keys is a better use of her time than going through Flesch, cause she's probably not going to be a professional musician. 

Tia Imani Hanna: But she'll know her keys.

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. And she'll be able to play. If she wants to learn a song off the radio or off of Spotify and this is the key of F sharp, she’ll be able to figure it out cause she's fluent in F sharp. 

Tia Imani Hanna: She can hear it.

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. There's no song on Spotify that goes up three octaves.

Tia Imani Hanna: No.

Leslie DeShazor: The practical application of what most people really do with their instrumental learning. Most people don't really do that. Most people want to be able to play songs they like. That's it. That's what most people want to do.

Tia Imani Hanna: And you're developing audience because they have ears for the music and there'll be looking for music that does that because their ear is developed beyond what the average person is developed. Because that's one of the things that I lament, some of the loss of some of the music in the schools because the kids aren't developing their ear. So, they're not listening for what I consider to be good music, because their ear is so limited, they can't hear it. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah, that's true. 

Tia Imani Hanna: It affects us on so many levels and we say… we talk about the financial times right now and musicians aren't making any money, but we aren't developing our audience either. And that's part of it. You've got to start young and develop those ears. Once their ears are open, then they hear stuff. They're like, “Oh, that's really cool. I want to do that.” Or “maybe I can start a band. I'm 23. I can start playing guitar now.” That's true. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Or hire somebody who plays already and I can do this thing and we'll have this new sound. Cause they hear things. 

Leslie DeShazor: Right.

Tia Imani Hanna: But anyhow is part of the mandate too, I think, to, as teachers, to help develop that audience ear. And I think personally, when I look at some of this stuff, the stuff I do is so out there anyway, but it's going to be like, some people are going to love it. Some people are going to be like, “Eh”, and that's fine, but that's going to be that way for every kind of music. But what I try to do is I try to create at least a melody and a harmony that's going to be nice, a nice pocket. And it might sound like there's nothing going on because this is just a general melody, but there's always something underneath going on like really deep. So, if you can hear, it's there. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah.

Leslie DeShazor: If you can't hear, you won't notice it. And you just hear the melody and that… but the melody is nice. So that's kinda my take on it. I want it to have these layers. And I think that's how it hits everybody, that different people would feel different parts of it. And they don't realize, anyway, rabbit hole. That's okay.

Leslie DeShazor: That’s right. When musicians start talking about their music, we go down fast. I used to have friend who was the only musician in our group, the only non-musician in our group of friends. And he would just be like cool until we started talking about music and he’s “I need to leave.” Musician’s weird. We’re tight. We stick together and we usually have a lot of friends who are musicians because most people just can’t really vibe with us too hard cause we don’t talk about normal subjects.

Tia Imani Hanna: Have you ever listened to Carlos Santana speak about anything?

Leslie DeShazor: I have not listened to him speak. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Every now and then he'll have an interview or something and he goes out, he goes. Yeah, you really do, because you're just like, okay. So, I get it. I feel like a non-musician when I  listen to Carlos.

Leslie DeShazor: Wow. That's funny. Yeah.

Tia Imani Hanna: Wayne Shorter. 

Leslie DeShazor: And Herbie. Wayne. Wayne definitely. Yeah.

Tia Imani Hanna: But it's fun. 

Leslie DeShazor: It is. I mean you get to… you learn to appreciate those differences about everybody. I think that's one of the great things about gaining age and maturity, you have… I think most people, those who are interested in growth, they really do broaden their ability to like, take in various perspectives and various personalities. Things were very much cut and dry for me when I was young. But now with some life experience, I appreciate those personalities that when I was younger, I'm like, Oh, they're just weird. I think what you appreciate about those people is that they're unafraid to be who they are, and no matter how much pushback they get, they stay strong and who they believe they should be. That takes a special kind of person because most people don't. There's a lot of jumping on bandwagons in our society. A lot of people just do what everybody else does. 

Tia Imani Hanna: And that's true. And you just wonder too, what I always wonder, is why are they so angry about it? 

Leslie DeShazor: I think it’s because they know that they should do different, more. You know what I mean? It's like today I saw a Facebook status of a colleague of mine about ‘anti-vaxxer, you should walk a mile in their shoes’. And it was a joke, and they were like clown shoes. First of all, that's no respect to the profession because the clown is like, for real, like a serious profession, like those guys train to do that. But the other thing is that, where is this low tolerance coming from that someone chooses to do something different? I think, in my experience, like there are a lot of choices I made young that offended people, but it was not, it had nothing to do with them. And that made me learn a lesson very early on. So, like, I became vegetarian when I was 15. I was vegetarian for 16 years. I, when I had children, I had one of my kids at home. I delayed vaccinations. I breastfed for what most people think is way too long. And I homeschooled my kids. And what I noticed in all of that… And, of course, I chose to be a professional violist. I'm bucking all kinds of status quos here. And I lift weights. So, I got muscles. A lot of people don't like that for a woman. But I, what I see and all that is that when you go against the grain, people take it as a personal offense because they feel bad that they don't have the courage to be different and that's why they project on to you. It's like moms, for example, women are always measuring their selves as mothers. There’s so much comparing. It's ugly. When you have a small child, people sit around and talk about how their child hit the milestones at three months and so when one parent says I feed my kid gluten-free and they've learned all their alphabet and they're like one, then everybody starts going well, “Learning the alphabet is not that important. Gluten-free is a myth.” They get offended. “Having kids at home, that's not safe.” And I'm like, pregnancy is not an illness. Like you don't really need to go to the hospital. People have babies at home all over the world. But what they took from that was that I was saying that they weren't a good mother because I did it this way. And that's a personal, that's an issue of feeling inadequate. Something inside of you is telling you that you are not making choices from a genuine place. You’re just doing what everybody else is doing. And when someone does something that everyone else is not doing, you want to defend everybody else because you don't have the courage to step out on some things that maybe you felt like you should step out on. We live in a society where assimilation is extremely important. And I think for humans, there's a need to assimilate in some situations like we need that unity. We need that oneness. But a lot of the things that we assimilate it on don't have anything to do with being a better human, it's really just a personal choice. If you choose to not take Tylenol when you have a headache and you take turmeric instead doesn't mean you're saying everyone who takes Tylenol is stupid.

Tia Imani Hanna: No.

Leslie DeShazor: But unfortunately, because of this kind of like, what is the word, like robotic way that we've chosen to live, we just get jolted when somebody's different. And it's unfortunate because that carries into the arts where people should be encouraged to be different. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Yeah. That's what art is, isn't it? I don't know, some famous artist said something like that. If somebody is not basically giving you pushback, then you're not making art. Because it's gonna, if you're doing true art, it's gonna, somebody is going to either love it or hate it. And then people in the middle go, “Meh.”

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Pushing the parameters. You're taking that box and you're making it bigger or you're just like taking the corners off of it. You're doing something different and yeah, I don't know. People think that musicians are creative and I've had to tell people frequently, “You'd be surprised. You have the same kind of people in music that you have in corporate America. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh yeah.

Leslie DeShazor: You’ve got the legalistic. You've got the purist. You got the people who want everyone to be the same. Then you've got the outliers. But most musicians are not outliers. 

Tia Imani Hanna: No.

Leslie DeShazor: We're not  taught to be that way. But that's, no, definitely not string players. [laughter] We are, like, the safest in the group. 

Tia Imani Hanna: String players, french horn players, oboe players. Who else in the safe they group? You cannot break out of that group. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Yeah. We are very much, and there's a need for that because when you're playing music with a bunch of people, you have to learn to blend, you have to learn to move with, you have to learn to be sensitive to, because it's a group. But outside of the group, a lot of us don't push any boundaries. We just kinda, “Oh, I'll just go home until my next group thing.”

Tia Imani Hanna: And we want to be safe. I get that too, because there is that fear, as musicians, like where is the next paycheck going to come from? And I've had a lot of jobs.

Leslie DeShazor: There's no fear of that now. There is no next paycheck. Not funny. Leslie. Not funny.

Tia Imani Hanna: Well, what else can you do but laugh?

Leslie DeShazor: I did a panel yesterday and one of the questions was like, what have you lost in this pandemic? I was like, income, a lot of it. And then the question was, when did you realize, like, when did it, like, kind of dawn on you, like what really what's going? And it's funny because, like you said, like with the humor thing, I think a lot of us, just for me at least, I pushed it to the back of my head. I try very hard to not think about how much money I've lost. I started gardening. I'd always wanted to do a garden. And then this year I'm home. So, I just planting seeds, like little, just like planting stuff all over my yard. I got some garden boxes and I just kept myself busy with that. And I did practice quite a bit. I spent a lot of time playing. I did some like porch concerts and stuff where I could, but October it hit me, like how grim this was. Because October is usually when the orchestral seasons are back in full swing. Teaching is back in full swing. Like you're already getting your plans for the winter and sometimes even for the spring and summer for the following year. And I think I went through like a couple of weeks of just feeling really depressed in October cause I was, like, I'm not going to work for a long time. And I've been doing Zoom teaching, but that within itself is a beast. Like it's taken me some time to accept it cause it's not same. But I think it really hit me hard in October when I started to, like, really see like how much work I haven't been able to do and how much work I'm not going to be able to do. And then you look at the vaccine rollout and how things are coming down and all the politics. I don't know that we'll be anywhere ready for concert halls to be filled again, even in this year. It's sad and hard to come to terms with, but with this like more aggressive strand of the virus now out and so much up in the air about what this vaccine can actually do in terms of preventing the spread of the disease. There's a good chance we won't see a concert hall filled again until 2022.

Tia Imani Hanna: If we're lucky. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Yeah. The summer might yield some things because we can be outside. But I also think too event planners and organizers are not willing to take the liability of people working under their watch and getting sick. So yeah, it's, for musicians, it's a hard time. I shouldn't just say musicians. Stage crew, front and back of house people, administrators, big organizations that had to furlough a lot of people. And then you've got the flip side of the people who are in the medical community, they've been working like crazy since last March. They haven't had a break. But it does.

Tia Imani Hanna: FedEx. 

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You guys are like the gold of the world right now. 

Tia Imani Hanna: We haven't had  a break. We haven't had a break. At Christmas time maybe it gets worse. It's been like Christmas time since February last year. And we went through Christmas again and it hasn't stopped. We haven't let up. So, we just haven't had a break. Everybody's exhausted. 

Leslie DeShazor: I can imagine, like, what I frequently have a good self-check, because as difficult as it is to be in this position of not thriving and working like I usually do, I've been shielded from the exposure that a lot of people are in every single day. Like I can choose if I want to leave my house or not. And there are a lot of people in other professions who can't choose that, like they have to work. And the demands like for delivery services are huge. Medical professionals, it's huge. Musicians, I think the thing that we'll have to see how this all pans out is how it has affected people's mental health. I think a lot of people are taking it very hard and mentally their health is really declining because they're not doing what they've been doing, so many of us, for decades at this point and the thought of having to give that up. I think I've known a few musicians who've gotten real estate licenses. They're starting to other things, but some of us are starting to think, what else could I do? If I can't work, what can I do in the meantime, what job will hire me? And you look at that. Somebody who's been… for me, I've taught, but like other musicians, some of them haven't taught, they've literally just performed for the last 25 or 30 years and haven't developed any other skills. So, the thought of now I may have to get a job that is minimum wage. And then you're competing, like a lot of minimum wage jobs, they're not going to hire somebody with no experience, or who's over experienced for the job, or clearly doesn't want to keep this job. You know what I mean? If you’ve been playing music your whole life, when you go apply at Starbucks, they're like, eh, you're not going to stay. They might give it to somebody else. So, it's pretty, it's pretty grim for a lot of people, but like for us, in terms of our household, I feel like we're very blessed. We haven't had to give up any huge things in our lives that will create hardship in our household. It doesn't feel good to not be playing out and having time with other musicians. It doesn't feel good for my kids to have to sit in the house all the time. But I am grateful that we have the luxury to sit in the house all the time, in this time, because it's dangerous to leave your house and be in certain situations. Cause we don't know, what's really going to happen if you get sick. So, I'm grateful, even though it's been difficult. I'm grateful that I have all that I have, and I'm glad I'm grateful that people still want to learn because I can always be teaching. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Great. So, you did a living room concert recently?

Leslie DeShazor: Yeah, I've done several actually. So, I did, let me think, I did one. My first one was in April last year. I did one in May. Then I did an outdoor. I did three outdoor neighborhood concerts. And two of them I streamed while playing for my neighborhood. Then I just did another, a streaming concert back on December 20th. That one I did live from the congregation. I didn't do it from my home. And yeah, so I've done, I guess that's five. Five live streams. Then I've done two concerts, one through River Raisin Ragtime, the other one through Folk, River Folk Arts organization, solo concerts that were also live stream. So, I've done seven solo live stream. My kids did play on some of them, solo live stream concerts during this pandemic. And that's been good. What I've learned about myself in this process is I need to play. I can't just be sitting here, like, not performing. I need to perform. I need to interact with people. But also, it's been financially like good too, because people want to hear music and they can't go to concert halls right now. So, if you're offering something they want to hear, they're willing to pay for it, so that's been helpful too. It's also forced me to get outside of the’ waiting for the gig’ mentality, and that's part of the reason why I'm wanting to record and do my own project. Moving forward, I have something I can say, “This is my project. This is what I do. This is my sound.” So, I've done, yeah, the concerts, the streaming concerts, have been fun. They've been awkward. So awkward, like in your living room. Like the first concert, hilarious. Like I practiced and practiced for that concert. And then I made a rookie mistake. I changed my first piece, like a week before the concert. So, I was doing a Bach accompanied movement of one of the suites, and I just wasn't feeling it, like I was doing the second movement of the D minor suite. And I changed it, like the week before. But I’ve played this one. It's the Currant from the C major. I played it a bunch of times. I'm like not stressed. I'm playing it at home. And there's this one spot that I'm like struggling to play smoothly, but I'm like, okay, I'm just going to make sure that I don't go too fast. Blah, blah, blah. So, I get my lights and my laptop, everything's set up, got my interface ready. Okay. Deep breath, time to press stream. And when I press stream, when I tell you, I have never felt those nerves in my life. Like my whole body got hot. My hands started sweating, and I'm standing there and I'm looking like, cause you don't know who's watching. You can see that there's… you can see how many people are watching in crowd caching, see how many people are watching, but no comments have come in yet. And so, I'm in my living room and I'm thinking, okay, I'm in my living room, no big deal. This is what I do all the time. I play in my living room. But when that stream started, I lost my bearings. I was just like, wait what am I doing? Wait. So, I started playing the Bach and at one point on that one spot, I stumbled, and I stopped. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Wow. 

Leslie DeShazor: And then I was just like, I put my instrument down and I was like, that was not supposed to happen. Those words came out of my mouth. The words came out of my mouth, “That was not supposed to happen.” And it was just like awkward silence. And I was like, I'm sorry, you guys, I'm so nervous. I didn't expect to be nervous, bear with me. And I'm like apologizing the comments that are coming in ‘no, that’s fine’. I'm scared. I'm just like, at that moment, I just wanted to shut down the computer and pretend like my internet failed. But I persevered. The nice thing was that my kids were on the next tune, so I could focus on them and get them in place and okay, here's your part. Here's your part. It distracted me from the sheer, like, mortification in the moment that I felt that I made such a horrible mistake and the rest of the concert was great. It went well, but that first concert man, it was rough, but I learned a good lesson. I learned a good lesson from that. And that was like, okay, don't take it for granted that you won't get nervous cause you're in your house. But then also too, that opening piece, you need to… like so what I did was the last concert, the first piece I did, it was one of the Teleman Fantasia's, it's an unaccompanied piece, acoustic piece. And I made myself practice that piece every day with no warmup for about nine days before the concert happened. No warm-up. Because what you find is when you're streaming your own concerts, you got to be in charge of your sound, your lights, the stream. There's a very good chance that when you press go, you have not had a chance to warm up. And then things happen. Like the internet is sometimes unpredictable. So, I practice that piece with no warmup for nine days every day. I just got to pick the instrument up and start playing it. And I was so glad I did that because on the day of the concert, I go to stream, no sound. And so, you can see me on the video. Like the Crowdcast, you'll have the mask on, and my eyes are just like, I'm like on the computer, like trying to figure it out, like looking like… I look so scared and worried people were like ‘smile’, ‘relax’ in the comments and I'm just like touching stuff and tapping stuff and clicking stuff, trying to get it to work. And then finally, by some miracle, it works. Don't know what happened. And so, I just okay, let me play this piece now. And I played the piece and that pretty much nailed it. So glad that I had forced myself to practice that piece with no warmup for those nine days, because that was the only thing that saved me from that completely panicking and sweating all over my viola and not being able to play. I have this big hair and I'm getting hot and I'm like, I want to put my hair up. Okay. Learn lessons, like I'm gonna make sure I try to do a check, but I was waiting on musicians who were a little late, but now I know even just soundcheck without them, just to make sure you have sound. That had never happened before. I've done all these live shows. I've never not had sound. I still don't know exactly what happened, to be honest, but life went on and people enjoy the concert, I think. The nice thing about right now, everybody's more forgiving because they understand that we're all trying to learn new things and work with it and things that we're not accustomed to. So, everybody was cool about it. Nobody asked for their money back. 

[“Acceptance” by Leslie DeShazor playing]

Tia Imani Hanna: It is that, right now, that we've all transitioned from the 20th century into the 21st century all at the same time. Yeah, this has never happened before and it'll probably happen again the next time there's a big leap from one technology to another, but it's never happened before in history of man, as far as we know, it's never happened before. So that's, it's like the caveman and all of a sudden there's a wheel, Oh, shoot, everybody has a wheel. Let's get a wheel. We need four of them. Okay.

Leslie DeShazor: Panel I did yesterday asked the question like what should musicians do to increase their resilience? And everyone had all these great, now it's just learn some technology because if you don't, you're going to be behind. And unfortunately, like all these, with all this stuff being canceled, more musicians are going to have to operate completely from home. Recording, videos, teaching with certain technical aspects. Learning even something as simple as zoom. Like you need to learn some technology as much as you might, you might naturally resist it because technology is a beast. But yeah. 

Tia Imani Hanna: And that's the way we're moving right now.  Thank you for those words of wisdom because that's definitely needed right now. So, where online can people find you?

Leslie DeShazor: I actually, and working on a website with my brother, which would just be LeslieDeShazor.com. So, we're in the process of working on that. But all of my shows that I've done are on Crowdcast and you can replay them and watch them again. So, if you just go to crowdcast.com and search my name, you'll be able to find all of the shows and you can watch them. And then of course I'm on Instagram and Facebook. 

Tia Imani Hanna: We're a little bit out of time right now, but the next time I'll have you on again, and we'll talk about the dancing. Because we went down that rabbit hole and it was all over. But thank you.

Leslie DeShazor: You're welcome. Thanks Tia.

Tia Imani Hanna: Thank you for joining us this week on Tia Time with Artists. Make sure to visit our website, tiaviolin.com, where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes and never miss an episode. Please leave us a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. We really appreciate your comments, and we'll mine them to bring you more amazing episodes. 

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