PROFESSIONAL GROWTH
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Send your questions to Edna Landau at AskEdna@MusicalAmerica.com and she’ll answer through Ask Edna. Click the links below to read Edna’s recent columns on the critical aspects of launching and managing and professional music career.
Communicating with Your Audience
During Edna’s 23 years as managing director of IMG Artists, she personally looked after the career of violinist, Itzhak Perlman and launched the careers of musicians such as pianists Evgeny Kissin and Lang Lang, violinist Hilary Hahn, and conductors Franz Welser-Mõst and Alan Gilbert.
Edna believes young musicians can grow their own careers, with “hard work, blind faith, passion for the cause, incessant networking and a vision that refuse[s] to be tarnished by naysayers.”
Special Reports
MA Top 30 Professional of the Year: Leslie DeShazor
As a young violist, Leslie DeShazor found that playing in a symphony orchestra wasn’t her thing. “Because I’m more of a free bird, sitting in a section and always having someone tell me how to play doesn’t really appeal to me,” she says.
Today, DeShazor is one of the busiest, most versatile freelance string players in Detroit, with a résumé that features engagements with jazz, pop, and rock stars (Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Hugh Jackman, to name a few), touring Broadway show orchestras (Hamilton, Hello, Dolly!), and, yes, symphony orchestras (Detroit, Toledo, Ann Arbor, Flint). She is a member of Musique Noir, a female-led string and percussion ensemble whose latest album is Reflections: We Breathe.
“My goal was to be as diverse a musician as I could be, and it’s really panning out now,” says DeShazor, who has a BM in viola performance from the University of Michigan School of Music. “I play almost any style of music, and if I don’t know it, I will learn it as I need to. The biggest challenge is being able to maintain every aspect of my playing, because each style has a different language. The main thing is to keep on top of my scales. Every day, I play scales.”
In addition to the viola, DeShazor plays violin, largely because most of her young students start out on violin. She teaches for the Sphinx Organization after-school program and for Detroit Symphony education initiatives that include a youth string orchestra called Sinfonia. It rehearses on Saturdays at Orchestra Hall.
“It’s kind of my treat at the end of the week because they already know how to play,” she says. “We’re doing the Zampa overture (Ferdinand Herold), a Piazzolla piece, and a contemporary piece for younger orchestras. The kids are happy to be learning them.”