February 28, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode, ArtsAbly is in conversation with Mercedes Yvonne Lysaker is a cellist, a teacher and a scholar based in New York City.
During the interview, Mercedes Lysaker mentions a certain number of resources that are listed on ArtsAbly’s website, in the Blog section. Access Mercedes Lysaker’s resources
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episodeof ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
The series presents artists, academics,and project leaders who dedicate their
(00:25):
time and energy to a better accessibilityfor people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversationson our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
(00:56):
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation withMercedes Yvonne Lysaker,
a cellist, a teacher, and a scholar based in New York.
You can find the resources mentioned by Mercedes Yvonne Lysaker during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website, in the blog section.
♪ Area Zero Underdepths (excerpt) - PokéCello ♪
(03:57):
♪ End of the excerpt ♪
Welcome to this new episodeof ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today, we are with Mercedes Yvonne Lysaker,
who is a cellist, a teacher,
and a scholar based in New York City.Welcome.
(04:19):
Thank you so much for having me, Diane.
Thank you.
I know that we went backand forth a little bit.
I know that you are also part of the RAMPDcommunity, which is dear to me too.
I've been following yourmultiple activities.
I know you have several interestingprojects on the go, and I'm looking
(04:42):
forward to talking about all that.
Great.I'm excited, too.
Okay, so I always start these episodesby asking about our guests.
About your background.
Can you tell a little bit more about you?
When did music start for you?
Music I don't remember when music startedfor me, but I was definitely the kid
(05:05):
that was bouncing around the living roomwhile my parents played music
and let me run down all the energybecause it was so overwhelming.
It was such an enormous sensory experiencefor me as a kid.
But I've been a cellist for a long time.
I don't want to say how longbecause that will age me.
But I got classical music
(05:30):
education, standard stuff.
I was an orchestra musician for a while.
And then there was the pandemic.
So since then, my work has expanded
from where I started.
I was very much on the orchestraltrack, on the teaching track.
(05:51):
I got a degree in music education.
I wrote my master's thesison the relationships that people have
with their instruments and how peoplehave these interpersonal relationships.
People name their instruments.
They have very social relationshipwith their instruments.
Then my scholarly intereststurned towards progressive pedagogy.
(06:16):
Big string pedagogy nerd.
Really, really likehow the instruments work.
I enjoy to figure out how toteach them effectively and efficiently.
And since New York City shut down for a while,
and I took that as an opportunity
to pivot towards a little bit more
(06:38):
social music making, in a sense,
because I wasn't going out anymore.
I wasn't doing things in person,
but I was more interested in making music
that was about social things.I was more interested in...
I started doing spiritualmusic, Jewish spiritual music.
(06:59):
I'm Jewish.
Social issue-based compositions.
And I was on this big plan that I had.
Through the pandemic, I reallyknew where I was going with all this.
And then I got cancer.
And getting cancer duringthe pandemic was a wild experience.
(07:20):
I don't recommend it.
But one thing it did was force meto slow down a little bit.
And so I spent my surgery time,my recovery time, my treatment time,
playing a lot of video games.
I think that's probably pretty expected.
That's when I got this crazy ideathat maybe video game music
(07:44):
would be a cool thing to do.
Because I had been so caught off guardby this medical event, I think as many
disabled people understand how disruptivethat can be if it happens suddenly.
For the past couple of years,I have been a lot into a little
video game music channel where I take
(08:08):
video game music and arrange it for
live cello, of course, in a wide varietyof genres, I do a lot of genre mixing.
I do a lot of hybrid formswith orchestral sounds and then
electronic music all mixed together.
(08:30):
So, strangely, this diversion from whereI thought I was going with my career
has really brought up some exciting stuff.
I'm very grateful
that I have this experience because now
I'm so active in this field.
(08:50):
All of my projects recentlyhave been in the video game music world,
which is a great world to be in,very progressive, very nice people.
It's been a real joy.
Yeah, I can imagine.
Where did you study?
What was your universitywhere you got your master?
(09:11):
I went to Indiana University.
I was in the pre- College program there.
I did my undergrad there,my master's degree there.
Then I moved to New York and I wentto Teachers College for my second degree
because got to go, got to keep learning.I love learning.
That's how I ended up in the cityfor the pandemic.
I always like to joke that this wasan awful idea because I decided to go to
(09:34):
music school during the great recession.
And then within 10 yearsafter I graduated, global pandemic
shut everything down.
I don't think I couldhave had worse timing.
That's not including the cancerand the car crashes, but it was just...
I don't know how anyone let me do that.Thanks, Mom and Dad.
(09:55):
I love you guys.
The cancer and the car crash.
So I guess that's part of my story.That's when I acquired my disability.
I was in my second full yearas an orchestra musician, and I was in
Southern Indiana, so it was all driving.
And hit a deer.
The carpool I was in hita deer, totaled the car.
(10:17):
And I just felt real weirdfor a couple of days.
Went to the doctor and they said,Oh, probably a head injury.
You might want to do something about that.
And I never recovered.
Just never came backto where I was before.
But you know what?
Ironically, I think being a musicianwas very helpful because I did not
(10:41):
rely on a 9:00 to 5:00office job, which I cannot do.
That was never somethingthat I needed to do.
I never had to be in a roomwith fluorescent lights
surrounded by people talking to me.
Ironic that I was alreadyin an accessible field,
although we can come back to that laterabout how accessible the field really is.
(11:03):
You studied classical performancewith an acoustic cello?
Correct.
At a certain point, you switched to anelectronic cello, or electric cello.
The real reason that I went to musicschool, and I have a professional answer
for job interviews, but for stufflike this, I can be honest.
(11:24):
I was really into Apocalyptica,
a heavy metal band that's all on cello.
Discovered that in middle school.
Middle school is when you havethose heavy metal feelings
that you have to deal with.
That's when those start.
Obsessed, just absolutely obsessed.
Whole discography, knewall these songs back and forth.
(11:45):
I would just play them on my cello.
I would put on my headphonesand turn up the music real loud
and try to figure out the parts.
Then I went to music schooland we didn't play very much Metallica
in the conservatory.
But then when I graduated, I just had thiscrazy idea that I was on route to go to
(12:08):
a friend's new place in South Carolina,and we drove through North Carolina
where the electric violin shop is.
I was like, Well,I never played an electric cello.
That sounds cool.I might go check it out.
Oh, boy, was that a bad idea?
Because I could notget that out of my head.
(12:29):
It was just the most electrifyingexperience, possibly, of my life,
because I could be loud, becauseI could really wail on this instrument.
My acoustic cello is the love of my life.
Her name is Amelie, good Frenchname, and my ecello is in the background.
Her name is Rosie.
(12:52):
But I suddenly could tap
into that initial feeling
that got me obsessed with the cello.
I could be loud.
I could cry in a way.
That was what was harderfor me to do on the acoustic cello.
One nice thing about the electriccello, obviously, can add effects to it.
(13:15):
You can make it sound like a guitar.
You can make it sound anything you want.
It is also very quietbecause it doesn't have a resonator.
I live in a New York Cityapartment building.
Hey, I am practicing recordingat 3:00 AM and nobody cares.
Little bonus there.
So from that, is that...
(13:35):
When did you start considering, Oh, I should
create my own identity as a fusion
metal rock player or something like that?
When did you start consideringbecause I know you have a name
where you perform that genre, right?
Yeah. I started that path
(13:59):
mentally and emotionally.
It took a little bitfor things to crystallize.
In 2016, when there was a presidentialelection that was very difficult,
and I realized I'm not a lawyer.
I'm not a policy person.I don't work in politics.
I didn't feel like there'sanything I could do.
(14:19):
All these things were happeningthat are happening again.
Yeah, sorry...
[Laughs.]I'm sorry.
I'm very sorry.
But I realized...
I felt like there was somethingthat was just missing,
that I was just seeing all these things happening, and I couldn't do anything about it.
(14:42):
It took a little bit before...At least I can make music.
I can make music that's angry,and I can make music that's sad,
and I can make music that, at the very,
very least, mocks something in this time.
I think my first...I adopted the name Contraforma
(15:04):
in 2020, 2021, somewhere in there.
That came to me when I was writing.
I was writing a journal article, andI was trying to come up with an antonym
for conform, because I had this image,
(15:24):
this sensory feeling of...
I think of Play-Doh or Silly Putty,
and you squish it with your hands and make into a shape.
The Play-Doh conforms to the shape.
But what would happen if the Play-Dohrefused and expanded instead
of you pushing in and expanded out?
And I came up with contraform.
(15:45):
Instead of conform, contraform.
And then I threw an A on the end because I'm a lady, you know.
That feeling of pushing, pushing back,
feeling all this pressure to be smaller
to be quieter or morepalatable, whatever it is.
(16:06):
I'm just saying, No, I'm good,and actively pushing that out.
My first single was aboutthe Texas abortion ban
that I think hit in 2021 or 2022.
It was called Aid and Abet.
That's where that came from.
(16:30):
I just felt I got to do something.
I have all these people around mewho are smart,
and I'm just like, I play the cello.
But having that really gave mean opportunity to at least try.
Got to try.
(16:51):
Yeah, but speaking of smart, it was
very smart to use this contraforma that
you're mentioning that is now the name
of your identity as a fusion cellist and
to play Johann Sebastian Bach and Vivaldiin fusion and in rock and in metal.
(17:15):
It's so natural.
I think that everyone who hears,especially for baroque music in a certain way,
you only have to hear it a certain way once, and you can't unhear how much
in common it really has with the sound
profile, the atmosphere of heavy metal.
(17:36):
When I put those effectson and was playing...
Okay, the Vivaldi came froma teacher training that I had to do.
I had to perform the piece,I had to memorize it.
I was practicing, and I was really bored.
Then I thought,Let's put some effects on this.
That's how that came out.
(17:56):
I was just like, This isthe best thing I've ever heard.
It worked so, so well.
It was very cool.
What about PokéCello?
Oh, boy.The only way that I got through cancer,
besides my family, I love you.
Thank you, family, playeda lot of video games.
(18:18):
It was such a way for me to be engrossedin something that was not the disruption
to my life because I couldn't work.It was the pandemic.
If I got COVID, I would have to notget surgery, not get treatment,
and I just had to be isolated.
I realized how many people rely on
(18:39):
something trivial, like video games,
as a support mechanism.
I was sitting there just,How am I going to get back to this?
How am I going to move forward?
I thought, Well, what if I justgo play one of these themes on the cello?
That was kind of fun.
(19:02):
I realized that one thing that I could do
to at least express my appreciation
for the way these video gameshelped me in this hard time
was to celebrate their music.
It started out as a little sideproject, something I would do when I
(19:24):
was procrastinating on my other projects.
I realized how much I loved arranging and orchestrating.
I would take these themesthat were not written for cello.
Many of them were not writtenfor human plate instruments at all.
They were written for soundchips, for the Game Boy
(19:47):
and the Game Boy events had their own chips.
Never meant to be played bya human being when they were composed.
So it was a really, really neat experience
and almost an academic exercise to takethese themes,
try to extract some melodic component,and then build up
(20:09):
from, I get it, sometimes a very thin
original material, a whole foundation of
keyboards, of strings,of brass, of synths.
And I started out doing really,really simple things.
My most recent projectwas a complete reimagining,
(20:31):
a complete reorchestration of a new theme
from this video game franchise.
I did not expect...
Starting a YouTube channel, you got to stick with it
if you want to see any gains from it.
(20:51):
I was really surprised that becauseI had found this niche completely by
happenstance, by circumstance, I was ableto build a little name for myself.
My channel is doing well.
It's very tiny, it's microscopic, butthere are people who listen to my music.
(21:14):
There are people who listen to my musicwhen they're having a hard time.
Because I started this for my own hardtime, that's been very
rewarding, I think.
You're also a teacher.
Yes, I am also a teacher and a writer.
(21:35):
My teaching has sloweddown a little bit because, again,
of the whole global pandemic.
But writing was also one of those thingsthat I was really able to focus on
when things shut down because it's justme and my brain, which works sometimes.
Not a guarantee,but sometimes it does work.
(21:58):
What about these publications?
I know you published a lot.
You did also some conference presentationsabout your work.
I'm interested in the topics thatyou're treating in these publications.
My big focus has beenprogressive string pedagogy.
Progressive education and music educationhave somewhat of a history.
(22:21):
It's not as significant
as other types of education.
But what I noticed was that the reallyfoundational philosophies of progressive
education had not made their way into howto teach people to play the violin
(22:41):
because the classical music educationindustrial complex is impermeable.
It's very, very difficultto get anything to change.
I realized that in music education,you basically had two things.
You could go the classical route where maybe you would get a great teacher,
maybe you get an abusive one.
That It was very, very commonwhere I went to school.
(23:03):
Or you could go to someonewho was progressive, but who wouldn't
give you anything of rigor.
They would just, Oh, you're doing great.That's a great job.
It was very difficult for meto move these things closer to each other
so that you could have the intensity,I think, of classical training
(23:27):
where you have laser focus on the smallest,
the finest of fine motor skills.
You're really thinkingabout body mechanics.
You're thinking about how to achieve
very minute movements that can blossom
(23:48):
into this whole repertoire of technique.
I was very excitedby the possibility that
we could still to have this
great tradition of very rigorous,
very intense classical training,where we could train people to play these
(24:12):
instruments to a really high level,
while also perhaps shedding some of
the conservative elements of conservatory.
I was very interestedin changing repertoire.
I was very interested in changingthe Suzuki method because
(24:33):
I am a Suzuki-certified teacher.
I did a lot of Suzuki training.
I really, really liked the scaffolding,like the sequencing.
I did not like that youhad to play Vivaldi.
When I was teaching in the citybefore the pandemic, I met so many
students who loved the craft, almost.
(24:55):
They were very, very interestedin figuring it out.
They saw the cello as a puzzle.
They saw it as somethingthat they could really explore.
They did not want to play Suzuki Book 1.
They wanted to play the We Shop menu.
They would come up with... They would say, Can we play Chicken Nugget Dreamland?
I was like,What's Chicken Nugget Dreamland?
They would play it for me.I'm like, Okay, let's play that.
(25:17):
That is not in the Suzukibooks, by the way.
It is a bop. It is a banger.You should check it out.
What I could do was I could take thesereally, really important principles for
approaching the instrument, for gettinga foundation, build those smoothly.
Then ideally, my students
(25:41):
would leave with enough ability
to play what they wanted and to playwhen they wanted and how they wanted.
If they wanted to bea professional, that's great.
If they wanted to playat a family party, fantastic.
If they wanted to do exactlywhat I did, put on their favorite music
with their headphones and play along to get through
(26:01):
the horrors of adolescence, that's worth it. That's important.
And I think that's the excitementthat I got from maybe finding
that little missing piece of education.
So my scholarship has been mostly abouthow to approach building curriculum.
(26:22):
A lot of the things that yousee in progressive education,
progressive music educationis very abstract, and that's not good.
We have teachers are so overworkedand underpaid that they have to use
the materials we give them,so we got to give them better materials.
What materials can we build?
I wanted to just add a little bit
(26:44):
to the library that we pull from when
we teach so that we could have maybe just
a slightly wider pool of instrumentalistsin the next generations.
Did you do professional developmentsfor teachers or people
who wanted to go further in that?
(27:06):
Yeah, I've done a couple workshops.
I've done talks at universities
and education departments.
One of my more recent ones was
adapting a framework from literacy,
from reading education, actually, to music.
(27:27):
The framework was how literature shows us
windows into other people's lives.
And it can also show us mirrors and showus our own life reflected back in them.
It makes a lot of sense in literature.
And I thought, well,What does that look like in music?
What would a musical mirror look like?
(27:50):
What would a musical window look like?
And I went through some of our more common
string education materials,
and I said, Hey, who has mirrors here?
Who has mirrors?Who has windows?
What does that mean?
What does that change forthe learning experience of that student
(28:12):
when maybe those things are not balanced?
For sure.
Did you have an answer?
[Laughs.]Oh, boy.
Well, as an academic,you never have any answers.
You got to write more papers.
Yeah.
(28:32):
I know.
There is somethingI read in your biography,
and that - I have to ask the question.
I read that you're workingwith some national trade organizations
advocating for disability rightsand string education.
(28:52):
What are these nationaltrade organizations?
Well, one of them is called RAMPD,of course, the dear organization
Recording Artists and MusicProfessionals with Disabilities.
One thing that I did notice as a scholar,
well, scholar sounds a little,
(29:13):
not a very accessible field.
Not a lot of people who were interested in
non-superficial accessibility.
I feel like there's a lotof things where we have a ramp.
We have a wheelchair userin our promotional materials.
We have a performerwith a limb difference.
(29:35):
We... check.We did it.
I just happened to see on Twitter many,many years ago, it feels like now, that
there was maybe this new organization.
And that did really crystallize a coupleof things for me because I realized
that this feeling I had about the inaccessibility of,
(29:58):
I mean, not just performing,
but also teaching also beingsomething of an academic,
trying to talk to people, trying to share ideas.
There was a gap there.
There weren't a lot of people in those rooms who were thinking about the things that
(30:19):
RAMPD is just loud about.
I mean, disability culture, blank looks.
Very, very little interest in adjusting
how we do things because of the pandemic.
Being at somewhat of a higher risk
for COVID complications, suddenly, nobody -
(30:42):
everyone was fine with me no longer being there.
I like to stay at home and do nothing.
So sometimes I was alsohappy with not being there.
But the feeling that
suddenly I didn't really know
how to advocate for myself Iknew intellectually
(31:03):
that something was wrong, but I also knew
that there were probably dozens, hundreds
of other people like me who are beingpushed out, who were feeling that they did not
have anyone who would listen to them.
They didn't feel...
Maybe they didn't havean opportunity to voice things.
(31:25):
And so finding RAMPD helped crystallize
some of the the principles of advocacy
and activism and being loud.
I think that's the thingthat really draws me to RAMPD
is that it is not polite all the time.
(31:52):
I mean, maybe that's not a nice thingto say, but we're very interested in
getting equity, getting access,
and we're not going to be pretty pleased about...
There's an insistence that I think isnecessary, especially in these times,
(32:13):
and a defiant celebration
that we're here,
we know what we're doing, we're professionals,
and it's time to let us in.
We're promoting disabilityculture, which is very important,
and trying to show that accessibilityin the art is important.
(32:35):
While in these times, someone is just
saying that EDI is not important and
removing important pages from importantwebsites, I wouldn't name this person,
but really, it makes it even moreimportant for us to talk about that.
Can you give us a meaning or a definition
(32:58):
of what it is for you, disability culture?
I...
Recently, I had a really greatexperience with Lachi.
I worked on some music videoswith her, and this was my first
COVID safe production thatI had really done where I was not...
Usually, I am the person wearing a maskand avoiding things, right?
(33:22):
But this was the first event productionthat I'd been to where
everyone was wearing a mask because I was there.
I had my little trustee air purifier.
What was very interesting to me was thatevery person in that room
also had access needs.
(33:43):
Because I was focused onthe COVID safety as an access need.
But I was not the only personin the room who had needs.
And some people needed the lightsto not flash, no bright light.
Some people needed to seepeople's mouths to read lips.
And that was a rare occurrence for me.
(34:05):
I am very used to being the only personin the room with access needs.
And so suddenly, that was just normal.
That was just what was happeningeveryone had that.
And there was this real feelingof safety, of camaraderie, of community,
because I wasn't the weird one anymore.
(34:29):
I always I feel just a little bitoff, and I wear these glasses
because of the lights, and I havereally bad light sensitivity.
I look a little odd sometimes,and I'm very used to being the one person
that's like, Hey, I need something.
I need this, I need that.
Very few other people are expressingtheir needs, their access needs.
(34:53):
But being on this production with Lachireally crystallized for me that
disability culture is a way of life, is away of interacting with people where your
access needs are like everything else.
I have a name, I have an identity,I have a role, I have access needs.
(35:13):
And that's exactly the same for you.
It was the same for everysingle person on that set.
I was not the only personanymore with access needs.
And feeling that, feeling that just be normalized,
that just being part of the process,
Revolutionary for me, frankly.
Disability culture for meis that feeling of community.
(35:38):
This is not somethingthat makes us different,
it's something that makes us alike.
Yeah, that's very interestingbecause the access need is something
that either is not frequentlytalked about or treated as an exception
or something that is like, No, you'rethe only one who has an access need.
(36:01):
Everybody has an accessneed, even non-disabled folks.
They have access needs because they need adesk that sometimes surrelevates because
they have back issues or they frequentlytravel, so they have these always
carrying all these suitcases andneeding something that is easy to roll.
(36:22):
It's an access need.
That idea that
everyone has access needs and
one thing that we can do is make that normal.
I mean, that just blows the door openfor not just disabled people,
but single parents,people that work multiple jobs,
(36:46):
people that are caregivers to their familymembers, everyone that has access needs
who doesn't have a space to
say them, to ask for them.
That door can be kickedopen for them as well.
I think that's pretty cool.
(37:09):
Do you have this conversationwith your students sometimes about
access needs or different way of playing
that might be different than the traditional
way they are learning, things like that?
When I started teaching,I had no real goals.
(37:31):
I had no real plans.
I'm going to be completely honestwith you, when I started,
I wanted extra money because you gotto make money as a working musician.
But when I started doing my training,I realized that a lot of the things
I was being taught to do were -
I didn't use this language then, but I can use it now,
they were not accessible.
(37:52):
They were for one type of student.
If that student had, I mean, performanceanxiety, if that student had
emotional regulation issues, if that student
was not a cookie cutter, right?
I would fail them as a teacher,but they would fail.
(38:18):
I would be the true failure, butthey would be the one who were labeled.
The failure would be placed on them, and the blame would be placed on them
for not being capable.
And I remember in my very firsttraining, I brought something
like this up because it shocked me.
It really bothered me that I knew peoplewho would not respond to this teaching.
(38:39):
And I said, well, hey, what do wedo when we have a student who
says this or needs this or asks this.
They didn't have an answer.
They just really didn't.
So my real impetus for actually goingand getting
training, going back to grad schoolfor music education, was because I noticed
(39:05):
the way that we teach children,especially when they get
to be young adults and they go to college,can be very damaging.
I knew people in college withreal, real problems that came from
their teachers not meeting their needs.
(39:25):
And I think that if you are a freshman in conservatory and you walk into that studio
with a great master, you're notgoing to advocate for yourself.
The power dynamic is too strong there.
And so it gets very, very easyto put all these things on yourself
(39:46):
to say, I am the one who is failing.
I am the one who is not good enough.
When really there are thingsthat the community can do.
There are things thatyour teachers can do.
There are things that theadministrators can do.
There are things thatthe institutions can do.
When I was a teacher and I startedobserving this and looking at this,
(40:08):
I wish I knew the term access needs.
I wish I had that direct languagebecause that made me really mad.
Did not like that.
Did this realization impact your music,your performance practices,
or the way you were seeing your music?
(40:31):
It definitely made me
a little bit more clear-headed.
It clarified things for mein terms of what I was bringing in
to the practice room.
Love practicing, obsessed with practicing.
I can be alone in a roomand no one is allowed to talk to me
for hours, like a dream scenario.
(40:53):
The issue that I certainly had at maybethe end of college was that
it was bringing more into practice roomwith me than the instrument.
When I started looking into this issue,when I started teaching and started researching,
one of my very first questions was,
(41:14):
how do we help students?
How do we help other professionals onlybring the stuff they really need
into the practice room?
How do we get them to leavetheir teacher's voice in the hallway,
that internal critic that's always seeingsomething wrong with what you're doing?
(41:35):
How do you leave the pressure of auditionsin the hallway when you go to practice?
Some people can do that very naturally,and they are the ones that get ahead.
Other people who can'tdo that naturally, they're the ones
with substance use problems.
For the first time, I was ableto really put language to that.
(41:58):
I was able to say, I do notneed my teacher's voice in my head.
I do not need that in the practice room.I need a metronome.
I need a tuner.
I need my étude books.
I do not need an internal critic.
Having that did helpmy approach to the instrument,
which I hope makes me a better teacher.I don't know.
(42:20):
Fingers crossed.
I want to go back brieflyto what you're doing now.
Is there something you're workingon right now that you want to talk about?
Well, I have a...
Well, I'll say this, you cancheck back with me in about a year
and I'll have more to say.
But I've been, this year,
(42:41):
planning to expand my video game channel
to a broader production company, and I am starting
to write original video game music.
I'm starting to do actual...
I mean, not actual, but arrangementsthat are notated, that are,
I can put in PDFs and make portfolios of.
(43:03):
And I am hoping that by the endof the year, I will have
a little company name to plug on your podcast next year.
But that is the place that I'm going.
And I'm hoping it is a difficultindustry, it is a difficult economy,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
(43:24):
But I've loved this project so much thatI am hoping that maybe you will see me in
the credits of a real video game someday.
Well, fingers crossed..
We need some luck, but you know.
[Laughs.]
That's awesome.
Okay, so I have a last questionto conclude this interview, and it's about
(43:48):
people who might have influencedyour career or counted or motivated you.
If you think of people who you cross pathwith and you really said, Oh, that person
really helped, who would it be and why?
To be honest, I think that one of the
(44:10):
most influential people in my path from
musician to advocate or activist,
or at least active musician, in that sense, was
the professor I had in grad school whoaccused me of forging my doctor's notes.
(44:31):
I was in a car crash inmy first semester of grad school.
I was in another car crashin my second semester of grad school.
Very bad luck just happens.
You never know whenthat's going to happen to you.
I needed incompletesbecause I couldn't use a computer.
(44:52):
The lights were too bright.I couldn't think.
I couldn't string a sentence together.
It was really difficult, really difficulttime, a lot of neurological problems.
And it was April.
It was the end of the semester,and I went to my professors
and was like, hey, I need incompletes.It just has to happen.
I can't finish the work.
(45:13):
And I had one professor whowouldn't give me one.
And if I failed that class,which I would have
because my work after the car,because of these car crashes,
was not great,and I couldn't finish the assignments,
I would have failed the class,which would kick out of the department.
So I had one person, one person,
(45:37):
whose doubt could have just
derailed my entire career.
I would have lost almost everythingthat I worked for to that point.
That one person definitely
motivated me, I will say.
That person, in a sense, gave methe permission to see myself as disabled
(46:03):
because I had not started doing that yet.
I did not see myself as that at that time.
But the moment someone saw that in meand assigned that label to me and then
used it for discrimination,that gave me the permission
I needed to say, You know what?
I do have access needs.
(46:23):
I do need to wear these glasses.
I do need all of this administrativesupport so I don't forget things.
I suddenly had neurological problemsthat I never had before,
and I probably would have just
shrugged and struggled along without that
(46:48):
graduate advisor telling me that, well,are you sure this is from your doctor?
Because it just looks like youcopied the header on a piece of paper.
Now I am here.I am in RAMPD.
I am on this podcast.
I am very proudly disabled.
I am happy to be part of the community.
(47:08):
And as much as my teachers,
as my family, as my cats have supported me,
someone pissing me off
was actually a little bit more helpful
than maybe I realized in that moment.
(47:29):
It's very interesting.
It's incredible that a negativity
pushed you to become positive with
everything that was happening to you.
Well done.
Fight is a very powerful motivation.
I would encourage anyone who hasexperienced something like that, use it.
(47:53):
Use it to your advantage.
Let it fuel you.
Because I might stillbe living in my parents house
if I had let that person just walkall over me, and if I had let her kick me
out of the department, if I had let hertake those things from me, I don't know.
I probably wouldn't haveall the things I have today.
(48:13):
So let those things motivate you.
Well, thank you for allthese bits of experiences.
Really, it was very interestingto chat with you about
your experience in this musical path.
Thank you.
(48:34):
Well, good luck for your big project.
We are going to follow that.
There's going to be a resource page wherewe're going to definitely publish things.
So yeah, hopefully it will come soon.
And, yeah, for every other project that you have.
Maybe see you in one of the RAMPDevents, maybe see you around.
(48:55):
That would be very nice.
I agree.
Okay.Have a great day.
Thanks, Diane.You too.
Bye.Take care..
♪ Closing theme music ♪
♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episodeof ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
The series presents artists, academics,and project leaders who dedicate their
(00:25):
time and energy to a better accessibilityfor people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversationson our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
(00:56):
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation withMercedes Yvonne Lysaker,
a cellist, a teacher, and a scholar based in New York.
You can find the resources mentioned by Mercedes Yvonne Lysaker during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website, in the blog section.
♪ Area Zero Underdepths (excerpt) - PokéCello ♪
(03:57):
♪ End of the excerpt ♪
Welcome to this new episodeof ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today, we are with Mercedes Yvonne Lysaker,
who is a cellist, a teacher,
and a scholar based in New York City.Welcome.
(04:19):
Thank you so much for having me, Diane.
Thank you.
I know that we went backand forth a little bit.
I know that you are also part of the RAMPDcommunity, which is dear to me too.
I've been following yourmultiple activities.
I know you have several interestingprojects on the go, and I'm looking
(04:42):
forward to talking about all that.
Great.I'm excited, too.
Okay, so I always start these episodesby asking about our guests.
About your background.
Can you tell a little bit more about you?
When did music start for you?
Music I don't remember when music startedfor me, but I was definitely the kid
(05:05):
that was bouncing around the living roomwhile my parents played music
and let me run down all the energybecause it was so overwhelming.
It was such an enormous sensory experiencefor me as a kid.
But I've been a cellist for a long time.
I don't want to say how longbecause that will age me.
But I got classical music
(05:30):
education, standard stuff.
I was an orchestra musician for a while.
And then there was the pandemic.
So since then, my work has expanded
from where I started.
I was very much on the orchestraltrack, on the teaching track.
(05:51):
I got a degree in music education.
I wrote my master's thesison the relationships that people have
with their instruments and how peoplehave these interpersonal relationships.
People name their instruments.
They have very social relationshipwith their instruments.
Then my scholarly intereststurned towards progressive pedagogy.
(06:16):
Big string pedagogy nerd.
Really, really likehow the instruments work.
I enjoy to figure out how toteach them effectively and efficiently.
And since New York City shut down for a while,
and I took that as an opportunity
to pivot towards a little bit more
(06:38):
social music making, in a sense,
because I wasn't going out anymore.
I wasn't doing things in person,
but I was more interested in making music
that was about social things.I was more interested in...
I started doing spiritualmusic, Jewish spiritual music.
(06:59):
I'm Jewish.
Social issue-based compositions.
And I was on this big plan that I had.
Through the pandemic, I reallyknew where I was going with all this.
And then I got cancer.
And getting cancer duringthe pandemic was a wild experience.
(07:20):
I don't recommend it.
But one thing it did was force meto slow down a little bit.
And so I spent my surgery time,my recovery time, my treatment time,
playing a lot of video games.
I think that's probably pretty expected.
That's when I got this crazy ideathat maybe video game music
(07:44):
would be a cool thing to do.
Because I had been so caught off guardby this medical event, I think as many
disabled people understand how disruptivethat can be if it happens suddenly.
For the past couple of years,I have been a lot into a little
video game music channel where I take
(08:08):
video game music and arrange it for
live cello, of course, in a wide varietyof genres, I do a lot of genre mixing.
I do a lot of hybrid formswith orchestral sounds and then
electronic music all mixed together.
(08:30):
So, strangely, this diversion from whereI thought I was going with my career
has really brought up some exciting stuff.
I'm very grateful
that I have this experience because now
I'm so active in this field.
(08:50):
All of my projects recentlyhave been in the video game music world,
which is a great world to be in,very progressive, very nice people.
It's been a real joy.
Yeah, I can imagine.
Where did you study?
What was your universitywhere you got your master?
(09:11):
I went to Indiana University.
I was in the pre- College program there.
I did my undergrad there,my master's degree there.
Then I moved to New York and I wentto Teachers College for my second degree
because got to go, got to keep learning.I love learning.
That's how I ended up in the cityfor the pandemic.
I always like to joke that this wasan awful idea because I decided to go to
(09:34):
music school during the great recession.
And then within 10 yearsafter I graduated, global pandemic
shut everything down.
I don't think I couldhave had worse timing.
That's not including the cancerand the car crashes, but it was just...
I don't know how anyone let me do that.Thanks, Mom and Dad.
(09:55):
I love you guys.
The cancer and the car crash.
So I guess that's part of my story.That's when I acquired my disability.
I was in my second full yearas an orchestra musician, and I was in
Southern Indiana, so it was all driving.
And hit a deer.
The carpool I was in hita deer, totaled the car.
(10:17):
And I just felt real weirdfor a couple of days.
Went to the doctor and they said,Oh, probably a head injury.
You might want to do something about that.
And I never recovered.
Just never came backto where I was before.
But you know what?
Ironically, I think being a musicianwas very helpful because I did not
(10:41):
rely on a 9:00 to 5:00office job, which I cannot do.
That was never somethingthat I needed to do.
I never had to be in a roomwith fluorescent lights
surrounded by people talking to me.
Ironic that I was alreadyin an accessible field,
although we can come back to that laterabout how accessible the field really is.
(11:03):
You studied classical performancewith an acoustic cello?
Correct.
At a certain point, you switched to anelectronic cello, or electric cello.
The real reason that I went to musicschool, and I have a professional answer
for job interviews, but for stufflike this, I can be honest.
(11:24):
I was really into Apocalyptica,
a heavy metal band that's all on cello.
Discovered that in middle school.
Middle school is when you havethose heavy metal feelings
that you have to deal with.
That's when those start.
Obsessed, just absolutely obsessed.
Whole discography, knewall these songs back and forth.
(11:45):
I would just play them on my cello.
I would put on my headphonesand turn up the music real loud
and try to figure out the parts.
Then I went to music schooland we didn't play very much Metallica
in the conservatory.
But then when I graduated, I just had thiscrazy idea that I was on route to go to
(12:08):
a friend's new place in South Carolina,and we drove through North Carolina
where the electric violin shop is.
I was like, Well,I never played an electric cello.
That sounds cool.I might go check it out.
Oh, boy, was that a bad idea?
Because I could notget that out of my head.
(12:29):
It was just the most electrifyingexperience, possibly, of my life,
because I could be loud, becauseI could really wail on this instrument.
My acoustic cello is the love of my life.
Her name is Amelie, good Frenchname, and my ecello is in the background.
Her name is Rosie.
(12:52):
But I suddenly could tap
into that initial feeling
that got me obsessed with the cello.
I could be loud.
I could cry in a way.
That was what was harderfor me to do on the acoustic cello.
One nice thing about the electriccello, obviously, can add effects to it.
(13:15):
You can make it sound like a guitar.
You can make it sound anything you want.
It is also very quietbecause it doesn't have a resonator.
I live in a New York Cityapartment building.
Hey, I am practicing recordingat 3:00 AM and nobody cares.
Little bonus there.
So from that, is that...
(13:35):
When did you start considering, Oh, I should
create my own identity as a fusion
metal rock player or something like that?
When did you start consideringbecause I know you have a name
where you perform that genre, right?
Yeah. I started that path
(13:59):
mentally and emotionally.
It took a little bitfor things to crystallize.
In 2016, when there was a presidentialelection that was very difficult,
and I realized I'm not a lawyer.
I'm not a policy person.I don't work in politics.
I didn't feel like there'sanything I could do.
(14:19):
All these things were happeningthat are happening again.
Yeah, sorry...
[Laughs.]I'm sorry.
I'm very sorry.
But I realized...
I felt like there was somethingthat was just missing,
that I was just seeing all these things happening, and I couldn't do anything about it.
(14:42):
It took a little bit before...At least I can make music.
I can make music that's angry,and I can make music that's sad,
and I can make music that, at the very,
very least, mocks something in this time.
I think my first...I adopted the name Contraforma
(15:04):
in 2020, 2021, somewhere in there.
That came to me when I was writing.
I was writing a journal article, andI was trying to come up with an antonym
for conform, because I had this image,
(15:24):
this sensory feeling of...
I think of Play-Doh or Silly Putty,
and you squish it with your hands and make into a shape.
The Play-Doh conforms to the shape.
But what would happen if the Play-Dohrefused and expanded instead
of you pushing in and expanded out?
And I came up with contraform.
(15:45):
Instead of conform, contraform.
And then I threw an A on the end because I'm a lady, you know.
That feeling of pushing, pushing back,
feeling all this pressure to be smaller
to be quieter or morepalatable, whatever it is.
(16:06):
I'm just saying, No, I'm good,and actively pushing that out.
My first single was aboutthe Texas abortion ban
that I think hit in 2021 or 2022.
It was called Aid and Abet.
That's where that came from.
(16:30):
I just felt I got to do something.
I have all these people around mewho are smart,
and I'm just like, I play the cello.
But having that really gave mean opportunity to at least try.
Got to try.
(16:51):
Yeah, but speaking of smart, it was
very smart to use this contraforma that
you're mentioning that is now the name
of your identity as a fusion cellist and
to play Johann Sebastian Bach and Vivaldiin fusion and in rock and in metal.
(17:15):
It's so natural.
I think that everyone who hears,especially for baroque music in a certain way,
you only have to hear it a certain way once, and you can't unhear how much
in common it really has with the sound
profile, the atmosphere of heavy metal.
(17:36):
When I put those effectson and was playing...
Okay, the Vivaldi came froma teacher training that I had to do.
I had to perform the piece,I had to memorize it.
I was practicing, and I was really bored.
Then I thought,Let's put some effects on this.
That's how that came out.
(17:56):
I was just like, This isthe best thing I've ever heard.
It worked so, so well.
It was very cool.
What about PokéCello?
Oh, boy.The only way that I got through cancer,
besides my family, I love you.
Thank you, family, playeda lot of video games.
(18:18):
It was such a way for me to be engrossedin something that was not the disruption
to my life because I couldn't work.It was the pandemic.
If I got COVID, I would have to notget surgery, not get treatment,
and I just had to be isolated.
I realized how many people rely on
(18:39):
something trivial, like video games,
as a support mechanism.
I was sitting there just,How am I going to get back to this?
How am I going to move forward?
I thought, Well, what if I justgo play one of these themes on the cello?
That was kind of fun.
(19:02):
I realized that one thing that I could do
to at least express my appreciation
for the way these video gameshelped me in this hard time
was to celebrate their music.
It started out as a little sideproject, something I would do when I
(19:24):
was procrastinating on my other projects.
I realized how much I loved arranging and orchestrating.
I would take these themesthat were not written for cello.
Many of them were not writtenfor human plate instruments at all.
They were written for soundchips, for the Game Boy
(19:47):
and the Game Boy events had their own chips.
Never meant to be played bya human being when they were composed.
So it was a really, really neat experience
and almost an academic exercise to takethese themes,
try to extract some melodic component,and then build up
(20:09):
from, I get it, sometimes a very thin
original material, a whole foundation of
keyboards, of strings,of brass, of synths.
And I started out doing really,really simple things.
My most recent projectwas a complete reimagining,
(20:31):
a complete reorchestration of a new theme
from this video game franchise.
I did not expect...
Starting a YouTube channel, you got to stick with it
if you want to see any gains from it.
(20:51):
I was really surprised that becauseI had found this niche completely by
happenstance, by circumstance, I was ableto build a little name for myself.
My channel is doing well.
It's very tiny, it's microscopic, butthere are people who listen to my music.
(21:14):
There are people who listen to my musicwhen they're having a hard time.
Because I started this for my own hardtime, that's been very
rewarding, I think.
You're also a teacher.
Yes, I am also a teacher and a writer.
(21:35):
My teaching has sloweddown a little bit because, again,
of the whole global pandemic.
But writing was also one of those thingsthat I was really able to focus on
when things shut down because it's justme and my brain, which works sometimes.
Not a guarantee,but sometimes it does work.
(21:58):
What about these publications?
I know you published a lot.
You did also some conference presentationsabout your work.
I'm interested in the topics thatyou're treating in these publications.
My big focus has beenprogressive string pedagogy.
Progressive education and music educationhave somewhat of a history.
(22:21):
It's not as significant
as other types of education.
But what I noticed was that the reallyfoundational philosophies of progressive
education had not made their way into howto teach people to play the violin
(22:41):
because the classical music educationindustrial complex is impermeable.
It's very, very difficultto get anything to change.
I realized that in music education,you basically had two things.
You could go the classical route where maybe you would get a great teacher,
maybe you get an abusive one.
That It was very, very commonwhere I went to school.
(23:03):
Or you could go to someonewho was progressive, but who wouldn't
give you anything of rigor.
They would just, Oh, you're doing great.That's a great job.
It was very difficult for meto move these things closer to each other
so that you could have the intensity,I think, of classical training
(23:27):
where you have laser focus on the smallest,
the finest of fine motor skills.
You're really thinkingabout body mechanics.
You're thinking about how to achieve
very minute movements that can blossom
(23:48):
into this whole repertoire of technique.
I was very excitedby the possibility that
we could still to have this
great tradition of very rigorous,
very intense classical training,where we could train people to play these
(24:12):
instruments to a really high level,
while also perhaps shedding some of
the conservative elements of conservatory.
I was very interestedin changing repertoire.
I was very interested in changingthe Suzuki method because
(24:33):
I am a Suzuki-certified teacher.
I did a lot of Suzuki training.
I really, really liked the scaffolding,like the sequencing.
I did not like that youhad to play Vivaldi.
When I was teaching in the citybefore the pandemic, I met so many
students who loved the craft, almost.
(24:55):
They were very, very interestedin figuring it out.
They saw the cello as a puzzle.
They saw it as somethingthat they could really explore.
They did not want to play Suzuki Book 1.
They wanted to play the We Shop menu.
They would come up with... They would say, Can we play Chicken Nugget Dreamland?
I was like,What's Chicken Nugget Dreamland?
They would play it for me.I'm like, Okay, let's play that.
(25:17):
That is not in the Suzukibooks, by the way.
It is a bop. It is a banger.You should check it out.
What I could do was I could take thesereally, really important principles for
approaching the instrument, for gettinga foundation, build those smoothly.
Then ideally, my students
(25:41):
would leave with enough ability
to play what they wanted and to playwhen they wanted and how they wanted.
If they wanted to bea professional, that's great.
If they wanted to playat a family party, fantastic.
If they wanted to do exactlywhat I did, put on their favorite music
with their headphones and play along to get through
(26:01):
the horrors of adolescence, that's worth it. That's important.
And I think that's the excitementthat I got from maybe finding
that little missing piece of education.
So my scholarship has been mostly abouthow to approach building curriculum.
(26:22):
A lot of the things that yousee in progressive education,
progressive music educationis very abstract, and that's not good.
We have teachers are so overworkedand underpaid that they have to use
the materials we give them,so we got to give them better materials.
What materials can we build?
I wanted to just add a little bit
(26:44):
to the library that we pull from when
we teach so that we could have maybe just
a slightly wider pool of instrumentalistsin the next generations.
Did you do professional developmentsfor teachers or people
who wanted to go further in that?
(27:06):
Yeah, I've done a couple workshops.
I've done talks at universities
and education departments.
One of my more recent ones was
adapting a framework from literacy,
from reading education, actually, to music.
(27:27):
The framework was how literature shows us
windows into other people's lives.
And it can also show us mirrors and showus our own life reflected back in them.
It makes a lot of sense in literature.
And I thought, well,What does that look like in music?
What would a musical mirror look like?
(27:50):
What would a musical window look like?
And I went through some of our more common
string education materials,
and I said, Hey, who has mirrors here?
Who has mirrors?Who has windows?
What does that mean?
What does that change forthe learning experience of that student
(28:12):
when maybe those things are not balanced?
For sure.
Did you have an answer?
[Laughs.]Oh, boy.
Well, as an academic,you never have any answers.
You got to write more papers.
Yeah.
(28:32):
I know.
There is somethingI read in your biography,
and that - I have to ask the question.
I read that you're workingwith some national trade organizations
advocating for disability rightsand string education.
(28:52):
What are these nationaltrade organizations?
Well, one of them is called RAMPD,of course, the dear organization
Recording Artists and MusicProfessionals with Disabilities.
One thing that I did notice as a scholar,
well, scholar sounds a little,
(29:13):
not a very accessible field.
Not a lot of people who were interested in
non-superficial accessibility.
I feel like there's a lotof things where we have a ramp.
We have a wheelchair userin our promotional materials.
We have a performerwith a limb difference.
(29:35):
We... check.We did it.
I just happened to see on Twitter many,many years ago, it feels like now, that
there was maybe this new organization.
And that did really crystallize a coupleof things for me because I realized
that this feeling I had about the inaccessibility of,
(29:58):
I mean, not just performing,
but also teaching also beingsomething of an academic,
trying to talk to people, trying to share ideas.
There was a gap there.
There weren't a lot of people in those rooms who were thinking about the things that
(30:19):
RAMPD is just loud about.
I mean, disability culture, blank looks.
Very, very little interest in adjusting
how we do things because of the pandemic.
Being at somewhat of a higher risk
for COVID complications, suddenly, nobody -
(30:42):
everyone was fine with me no longer being there.
I like to stay at home and do nothing.
So sometimes I was alsohappy with not being there.
But the feeling that
suddenly I didn't really know
how to advocate for myself Iknew intellectually
(31:03):
that something was wrong, but I also knew
that there were probably dozens, hundreds
of other people like me who are beingpushed out, who were feeling that they did not
have anyone who would listen to them.
They didn't feel...
Maybe they didn't havean opportunity to voice things.
(31:25):
And so finding RAMPD helped crystallize
some of the the principles of advocacy
and activism and being loud.
I think that's the thingthat really draws me to RAMPD
is that it is not polite all the time.
(31:52):
I mean, maybe that's not a nice thingto say, but we're very interested in
getting equity, getting access,
and we're not going to be pretty pleased about...
There's an insistence that I think isnecessary, especially in these times,
(32:13):
and a defiant celebration
that we're here,
we know what we're doing, we're professionals,
and it's time to let us in.
We're promoting disabilityculture, which is very important,
and trying to show that accessibilityin the art is important.
(32:35):
While in these times, someone is just
saying that EDI is not important and
removing important pages from importantwebsites, I wouldn't name this person,
but really, it makes it even moreimportant for us to talk about that.
Can you give us a meaning or a definition
(32:58):
of what it is for you, disability culture?
I...
Recently, I had a really greatexperience with Lachi.
I worked on some music videoswith her, and this was my first
COVID safe production thatI had really done where I was not...
Usually, I am the person wearing a maskand avoiding things, right?
(33:22):
But this was the first event productionthat I'd been to where
everyone was wearing a mask because I was there.
I had my little trustee air purifier.
What was very interesting to me was thatevery person in that room
also had access needs.
(33:43):
Because I was focused onthe COVID safety as an access need.
But I was not the only personin the room who had needs.
And some people needed the lightsto not flash, no bright light.
Some people needed to seepeople's mouths to read lips.
And that was a rare occurrence for me.
(34:05):
I am very used to being the only personin the room with access needs.
And so suddenly, that was just normal.
That was just what was happeningeveryone had that.
And there was this real feelingof safety, of camaraderie, of community,
because I wasn't the weird one anymore.
(34:29):
I always I feel just a little bitoff, and I wear these glasses
because of the lights, and I havereally bad light sensitivity.
I look a little odd sometimes,and I'm very used to being the one person
that's like, Hey, I need something.
I need this, I need that.
Very few other people are expressingtheir needs, their access needs.
(34:53):
But being on this production with Lachireally crystallized for me that
disability culture is a way of life, is away of interacting with people where your
access needs are like everything else.
I have a name, I have an identity,I have a role, I have access needs.
(35:13):
And that's exactly the same for you.
It was the same for everysingle person on that set.
I was not the only personanymore with access needs.
And feeling that, feeling that just be normalized,
that just being part of the process,
Revolutionary for me, frankly.
Disability culture for meis that feeling of community.
(35:38):
This is not somethingthat makes us different,
it's something that makes us alike.
Yeah, that's very interestingbecause the access need is something
that either is not frequentlytalked about or treated as an exception
or something that is like, No, you'rethe only one who has an access need.
(36:01):
Everybody has an accessneed, even non-disabled folks.
They have access needs because they need adesk that sometimes surrelevates because
they have back issues or they frequentlytravel, so they have these always
carrying all these suitcases andneeding something that is easy to roll.
(36:22):
It's an access need.
That idea that
everyone has access needs and
one thing that we can do is make that normal.
I mean, that just blows the door openfor not just disabled people,
but single parents,people that work multiple jobs,
(36:46):
people that are caregivers to their familymembers, everyone that has access needs
who doesn't have a space to
say them, to ask for them.
That door can be kickedopen for them as well.
I think that's pretty cool.
(37:09):
Do you have this conversationwith your students sometimes about
access needs or different way of playing
that might be different than the traditional
way they are learning, things like that?
When I started teaching,I had no real goals.
(37:31):
I had no real plans.
I'm going to be completely honestwith you, when I started,
I wanted extra money because you gotto make money as a working musician.
But when I started doing my training,I realized that a lot of the things
I was being taught to do were -
I didn't use this language then, but I can use it now,
they were not accessible.
(37:52):
They were for one type of student.
If that student had, I mean, performanceanxiety, if that student had
emotional regulation issues, if that student
was not a cookie cutter, right?
I would fail them as a teacher,but they would fail.
(38:18):
I would be the true failure, butthey would be the one who were labeled.
The failure would be placed on them, and the blame would be placed on them
for not being capable.
And I remember in my very firsttraining, I brought something
like this up because it shocked me.
It really bothered me that I knew peoplewho would not respond to this teaching.
(38:39):
And I said, well, hey, what do wedo when we have a student who
says this or needs this or asks this.
They didn't have an answer.
They just really didn't.
So my real impetus for actually goingand getting
training, going back to grad schoolfor music education, was because I noticed
(39:05):
the way that we teach children,especially when they get
to be young adults and they go to college,can be very damaging.
I knew people in college withreal, real problems that came from
their teachers not meeting their needs.
(39:25):
And I think that if you are a freshman in conservatory and you walk into that studio
with a great master, you're notgoing to advocate for yourself.
The power dynamic is too strong there.
And so it gets very, very easyto put all these things on yourself
(39:46):
to say, I am the one who is failing.
I am the one who is not good enough.
When really there are thingsthat the community can do.
There are things thatyour teachers can do.
There are things that theadministrators can do.
There are things thatthe institutions can do.
When I was a teacher and I startedobserving this and looking at this,
(40:08):
I wish I knew the term access needs.
I wish I had that direct languagebecause that made me really mad.
Did not like that.
Did this realization impact your music,your performance practices,
or the way you were seeing your music?
(40:31):
It definitely made me
a little bit more clear-headed.
It clarified things for mein terms of what I was bringing in
to the practice room.
Love practicing, obsessed with practicing.
I can be alone in a roomand no one is allowed to talk to me
for hours, like a dream scenario.
(40:53):
The issue that I certainly had at maybethe end of college was that
it was bringing more into practice roomwith me than the instrument.
When I started looking into this issue,when I started teaching and started researching,
one of my very first questions was,
(41:14):
how do we help students?
How do we help other professionals onlybring the stuff they really need
into the practice room?
How do we get them to leavetheir teacher's voice in the hallway,
that internal critic that's always seeingsomething wrong with what you're doing?
(41:35):
How do you leave the pressure of auditionsin the hallway when you go to practice?
Some people can do that very naturally,and they are the ones that get ahead.
Other people who can'tdo that naturally, they're the ones
with substance use problems.
For the first time, I was ableto really put language to that.
(41:58):
I was able to say, I do notneed my teacher's voice in my head.
I do not need that in the practice room.I need a metronome.
I need a tuner.
I need my étude books.
I do not need an internal critic.
Having that did helpmy approach to the instrument,
which I hope makes me a better teacher.I don't know.
(42:20):
Fingers crossed.
I want to go back brieflyto what you're doing now.
Is there something you're workingon right now that you want to talk about?
Well, I have a...
Well, I'll say this, you cancheck back with me in about a year
and I'll have more to say.
But I've been, this year,
(42:41):
planning to expand my video game channel
to a broader production company, and I am starting
to write original video game music.
I'm starting to do actual...
I mean, not actual, but arrangementsthat are notated, that are,
I can put in PDFs and make portfolios of.
(43:03):
And I am hoping that by the endof the year, I will have
a little company name to plug on your podcast next year.
But that is the place that I'm going.
And I'm hoping it is a difficultindustry, it is a difficult economy,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
(43:24):
But I've loved this project so much thatI am hoping that maybe you will see me in
the credits of a real video game someday.
Well, fingers crossed..
We need some luck, but you know.
[Laughs.]
That's awesome.
Okay, so I have a last questionto conclude this interview, and it's about
(43:48):
people who might have influencedyour career or counted or motivated you.
If you think of people who you cross pathwith and you really said, Oh, that person
really helped, who would it be and why?
To be honest, I think that one of the
(44:10):
most influential people in my path from
musician to advocate or activist,
or at least active musician, in that sense, was
the professor I had in grad school whoaccused me of forging my doctor's notes.
(44:31):
I was in a car crash inmy first semester of grad school.
I was in another car crashin my second semester of grad school.
Very bad luck just happens.
You never know whenthat's going to happen to you.
I needed incompletesbecause I couldn't use a computer.
(44:52):
The lights were too bright.I couldn't think.
I couldn't string a sentence together.
It was really difficult, really difficulttime, a lot of neurological problems.
And it was April.
It was the end of the semester,and I went to my professors
and was like, hey, I need incompletes.It just has to happen.
I can't finish the work.
(45:13):
And I had one professor whowouldn't give me one.
And if I failed that class,which I would have
because my work after the car,because of these car crashes,
was not great,and I couldn't finish the assignments,
I would have failed the class,which would kick out of the department.
So I had one person, one person,
(45:37):
whose doubt could have just
derailed my entire career.
I would have lost almost everythingthat I worked for to that point.
That one person definitely
motivated me, I will say.
That person, in a sense, gave methe permission to see myself as disabled
(46:03):
because I had not started doing that yet.
I did not see myself as that at that time.
But the moment someone saw that in meand assigned that label to me and then
used it for discrimination,that gave me the permission
I needed to say, You know what?
I do have access needs.
(46:23):
I do need to wear these glasses.
I do need all of this administrativesupport so I don't forget things.
I suddenly had neurological problemsthat I never had before,
and I probably would have just
shrugged and struggled along without that
(46:48):
graduate advisor telling me that, well,are you sure this is from your doctor?
Because it just looks like youcopied the header on a piece of paper.
Now I am here.I am in RAMPD.
I am on this podcast.
I am very proudly disabled.
I am happy to be part of the community.
(47:08):
And as much as my teachers,
as my family, as my cats have supported me,
someone pissing me off
was actually a little bit more helpful
than maybe I realized in that moment.
(47:29):
It's very interesting.
It's incredible that a negativity
pushed you to become positive with
everything that was happening to you.
Well done.
Fight is a very powerful motivation.
I would encourage anyone who hasexperienced something like that, use it.
(47:53):
Use it to your advantage.
Let it fuel you.
Because I might stillbe living in my parents house
if I had let that person just walkall over me, and if I had let her kick me
out of the department, if I had let hertake those things from me, I don't know.
I probably wouldn't haveall the things I have today.
(48:13):
So let those things motivate you.
Well, thank you for allthese bits of experiences.
Really, it was very interestingto chat with you about
your experience in this musical path.
Thank you.
(48:34):
Well, good luck for your big project.
We are going to follow that.
There's going to be a resource page wherewe're going to definitely publish things.
So yeah, hopefully it will come soon.
And, yeah, for every other project that you have.
Maybe see you in one of the RAMPDevents, maybe see you around.
(48:55):
That would be very nice.
I agree.
Okay.Have a great day.
Thanks, Diane.You too.
Bye.Take care..
♪ Closing theme music ♪
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