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Oboist feasts on challenge, champions contemporary music

Hank Hoffman

Oboist Libby Van Cleve plays the oboe and oboe d'amore. Photo by Judy Sirota Rosenthal.

The current work of contemporary composers, says oboist Libby Van Cleve, “is full of vitality, full of beauty, all the things people are attracted to music for.”

For more than two decades, Van Cleve has forged a reputation as a performer of and proselytizer for contemporary music. Surprisingly, however, she asserts that, “right now as a performer I’m more interested in Bach and Mozart than anything else.”

What happened? In a word, according to Van Cleve, motherhood. Interviewed at the New Haven home she shares with husband Jack Vees and their 9-year-old daughter Nola, Van Cleve says her daughter’s birth changed her career trajectory. (Vees is a renowned composer and electric bass player with whom Van Cleve has collaborated in the ensemble Chez Vees.)

“Pre-Nola — B.C., or ‘before children’ — I used to laugh and say that any time I wanted to do anything with any meaning it involved two hours on a train or two hours on a plane. That’s fine when you’re footloose and fancy-free. Once I became a mom, I really wanted to stay close to home,” says Van Cleve.

She also jests that her need for “artistic challenge,” once met by contemporary music, is presently quenched by “the chaos and challenge of motherhood.” Her “nutritional need” right now is Mozart: “focused, pristine, everything in its place, a sense of crystalline perfection.”

Motherhood, however, has not changed Van Cleve’s immersion in music. She is director of the Oral History of American Music project (OHAM) at Yale University, a part-time but demanding position that has her juggling administrative responsibilities with interviews of emerging and established composers. OHAM, Van Cleve says, satisfies her “nutritional need for intellectual stimulation, for thinking about music not just from the perspective of a performer.”

She teaches oboe at Connecticut College and Wesleyan University. Her performance calendar is full: two recent concerts with Connecticut College faculty, chamber music concerts at Wesleyan University, freelance orchestral performances throughout Connecticut, and a committed chamber outlet playing baroque and classical music with Solisti St. Francis, based at St. Francis Church in New Haven. There are more than a dozen recordings in her discography, including works by her husband and esteemed area composers Anthony Braxton and Ingram Marshall. Van Cleve also regularly delivers lectures on oboe techniques and American music oral history. She has written two books. Oboe Unbound: Contemporary Techniques is an elaboration on her Yale doctoral thesis. Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington, co-authored with former OHAM director Vivian Perlis, is the first in a projected multi-volume series based on OHAM interviews.

Van Cleve began playing the oboe in elementary school. By high school, she was passionate about it, playing in school orchestras and even attending Interlochen Summer Arts Camp in Michigan when she was 16. She retains her passion to this day.

“The sound is just this wonderful, penetrating, intense sound,” rhapsodizes Van Cleve, who also plays the oboe d’amore and English horn. “Also, if you look at the oboe repertoire, it very much suits my personality. It’s always really intense, passionate, very expressive music.”

But her parents, both lawyers, discouraged her from attending music school after high school, steering her instead to a liberal arts education at Bowdoin College. Van Cleve acknowledges that the choice was a good fit, saying she knew by age 16 that the technique-oriented conservatory training “didn’t suit my personality.”

Her epiphany came during her summer at Interlochen. At first relishing and then bridling at the competitiveness and rigorous emphasis on technique, Van Cleve happened upon Henry and Sidney Cowell’s biography of Charles Ives. Van Cleve recalls “sitting in the woods reading about Charles Ives and thinking, ‘this is what I want. I don’t want to be constrained by boring aesthetics and don’t want to feel constrained by the sense that what somebody thinks is the way you are supposed to play this Brahms excerpt is going to have control over my life.’”

A commitment to contemporary music was cemented in her freshman year at Bowdoin. Van Cleve says, “I kind of found in contemporary music things I had not found in my conservative, orchestrally oriented musical training — a sense of artistry, a sense of exploration, a sense of creativity.” As part of “the freedom of going to a liberal arts college,” as Van Cleve puts it, she also developed skills in free improvisation, an approach foreign to many classically trained musicians.

“We would have happenings at Bowdoin. Somebody would read William Carlos Williams, I’d be playing some honking things on oboe, people were dancing around. It was all sort of part of that era, post-Cage,” recalls Van Cleve. After college, Van Cleve played in various chamber groups including “a highly committed improv trio called Paper Fire. It was kind of a revolutionary group. The whole idea of ‘paper fire’ was you were burning the manuscript. That was free music.”

Reacting in part to her parents’ disdain for music as a career, Van Cleve says she set “extremely clear goals” for herself prior to entering music school for the first time at age 24. “I’d give myself until 30, which seemed like midlife,” Van Cleve remembers. “The goal was to do everything I could with music. Get as deeply involved in contemporary music as possible but also use my skills to help people understand contemporary music.”

In her 20s she built the solid foundation of her career: working on commissions with composers, writing about music, improvising, teaching classes, running a concert series at Real Art Ways in Hartford, playing with orchestras on the side. Van Cleve earned her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts and her DMA from Yale University. Looking back at age 30, she says, she decided that music “was working for me. I didn’t have to change careers.”

Van Cleve acknowledges that contemporary music has a reputation for being notoriously difficult. She attributes that to the “post-World War II veneration of serialism, the sense that you have to be highly educated and extremely cerebral to even understand it.” Serialism is most widely associated with atonal music and a rigorously intellectual approach to composition.

“What a horrible thing to do to music!” exclaims Van Cleve. “Music can be a vehicle for fabulously intricate intellectual constructions but it’s also a vehicle for emotion.”

But contemporary music has changed, Van Cleve argues, “especially in the 20-30 years I’ve been involved.” She notes that, “a lot of alternatives started presenting themselves in the late 1960s and early 1970s.” Minimalism, as pioneered by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, offered “music that had pulse and was basically tonal.” The adventurous pop music of the 1960s also began to infiltrate the conservatory. Van Cleve recalls that even when she was in music school at Cal Arts and Yale in the 1980s, it “seemed so shocking” when the “really rebellious people” smuggled pop influences into their compositions.

“Now everybody is mixing up everything. With YouTube, the Net, everything is accessible,” says Van Cleve. “The contemporary composer is pulling from the great Western art tradition but also monks, people in Tuva, possibly blues artists from the 1930s. It could be anything and that’s basically respected.”

Van Cleve is particularly excited about young composers currently studying at Yale whom she has interviewed for OHAM. In their works, some of which are influenced by minimalism, she sees a return to a tradition of “beautiful, expressive music very intelligently written.”

Of her own recordings, all of contemporary music, Van Cleve has particular affection for Ingram Marshall’s Dark Waters as well as works composed by Anthony Braxton and the late Eleanor Hovda. Her husband’s composition Tattooed Barbie, which appeared on Vees’ Surf Music Again CD, “was really fun, very extreme and pushed me to the max,” says Van Cleve.

“He set up passages that were fiendishly difficult and sounded really hard but they were something I could do, athletic things I was capable of doing for a sustained period. For example, there was one movement where I’m circular breathing and doing a 64th note passage — flying, flying, flying while circular breathing,” recalls Van Cleve. “I was also going through electronics so it was almost like I was getting to a Jimi Hendrix level of energy.

“It’s an incredible joy and an incredible privilege to have a life in music,” says Van Cleve. “It’s difficult and it isn’t practical. There are a lot of challenges, financial and psychological. But it’s a really rich, wonderful way to interact with other people and serve people.”



Mind Sets: Research reimagined

David A. Brensilver

	Paul Theriault

In the summer of 2009, Cat Balco was one of a dozen artists whose work was featured in Status Update, a multimedia art exhibition at Haskins Laboratories – curated by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s director of artistic programs and services, Debbie Hesse, and Donna Ruff – that explored the use of emerging social networking technologies. When that exhibition came down, Hesse asked Balco to work with her on an exhibition that would pair artists with scientists and researchers at Haskins Laboratories, a nonprofit research facility that studies speech, reading, and related technologies – an exhibition that would engage Haskins Laboratories as more than a natural venue.

The resulting show, Mind Sets, had, as its jumping-off point, the “apparent conflicts between the scientific and artistic ways of thinking,” said Balco, who co-curated the exhibition with Hesse. “What happens,” Balco asked as a matter of example, “if we put two very different minds” to work on the same ideas?

Balco, a New Haven-based artist who teaches at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, said, “There’s been a lot of energy for this kind of collaboration in the art world recently.”

Working as a consultant to Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she was charged with integrating artwork into Kroon Hall, Balco became interested in the ways artists and scientists are working together.

“There are a lot of artists who are working in that kind of space … between science and art,” she said, pointing to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Art for the Environment project as an example.

West Hartford-based artist Carol Padberg, a colleague of Balco’s at the Hartford Art School, used as her muse Haskins Laboratories’ Pattern Playback – “an early talking machine that was built by Dr. Franklin S. Cooper and his colleagues at Haskins Laboratories in the late 1940s,” according to language on the Haskins Laboratories website.

“I’ve been working with encoded abstraction,” Padberg said, referring specifically to fonts and bar codes. “This is the first time I’ve worked with waveforms.”

Padberg had Haskins Laboratories CEO and Senior Scientist Philip Rubin read a poem by 12th century poet Ibn ’Arabi and send her the waveform generated by the Pattern Playback. On this Padberg based the works she contributed to Mind Sets.

“This truly pushed me into this new direction,” she said.

While she’d been thinking about language for years, Padberg said “this notion of digital language – taking spoken word and making it into imagery … that’s right up my alley.”

New Haven-based artist Martha Lewis, too, used the Pattern Playback as her inspiration, arriving, though, at a very different end. She based her work on the machine itself, and the museum at Haskins Laboratories in which it resides.

“It’s a very odd-looking machine,” Lewis said. “My piece is a kind of response to that.

“A lot of the things about the sound (of the Pattern Playback) reminded me of spy talk,” she said, referring to sentences generated by the machine such as “A large size in stockings is hard to sell,” and “Never kill a snake.”

She was equally fascinated with the machine’s history, as well as what she described as a “weird” picture of Caryl Parker Haskins. Lewis described her installation as a “poetic combination of all these things.”

Bethany-based artist Fritz Horstman collaborated with Christine Shadle. When reading about her work, Horstman’s attention was caught by the phrase “aerodynamics of speech,” which he found fit well with his interest in “trying to find the various places where nature and culture either converge or diverge.”

What he worked with in creating work for the Mind Sets exhibition were MRIs that showed what goes on within an individual’s upper body, neck, and head when he or she makes various sounds. The images, Horstman said, had “extremely elegant” shapes. He connected the human body to nature and language to culture.

After studying the MRI images, Horstman, using a mirror, observed for himself that his “body makes these shapes in order to produce the sounds of language.” Then, using that very sentence – “My body makes these shapes in order to produce the sounds of language” – he counted 39 distinct shapes, drew them in the style of the MRIs, on a 12-foot length of paper, and cut them out, presenting the above-mentioned sentence as empty space.

Participating artist Eva Lee worked with Dr. Einar Mencl, director of neuroimaging research at Haskins Laboratories, and, based on their conversations, created a visual poem called Word Brain.

In an e-mail, Lee wrote, “The Haskins project fits my interests because at the heart of my work is me wondering what the nature of mind and reality is. Science, as one way to investigate mind, yields some fascinating research and knowledge. At Haskins, where scientists look at the mind/brain connection in the context of language, I thought I would make art using their MRI images and words relevant to their studies. The resultant animation was a visual poem. As an artist I enjoy making work based on scientific materials or findings because I get to learn in the process, and hopefully, what I re-present is evocative and more than the sum of its parts for the viewer.”

For Brooklyn-based artist Lucy Kim, collaborating with a scientist was interesting because “what they do is just so bizarre to me.” As an artist interested in “surface modulation” – that is, juxtaposing two- and three-dimensional elements – Kim “zoomed in on one researcher right away.” Takayuki Ito’s work focuses on how the manipulation of the facial skin and muscles alters how we perceive sound and language. Both, Kim said, are interested in “some kind of distortion based on surface modulation.”

Matt Sargent, a Hartford-based composer, created a piece for percussionist Bill Solomon based on studies by Bruno Hermann Repp, whose research, Sargent said, “has to do with synchronization and perception of rhythm.”

Sargent had Solomon record his piece – a series of non-repeating rhythms – 30 times with a click track. Sargent built a computer program that turned the click track off a little sooner with each performance, leaving Solomon to follow his perception of time. Sargent then took those 30 versions of his piece and layered them on top of one another.

Because Mind Sets is the result of artists’ responses to scientists’ research – and not just about each artist’s individual work – Balco thought it important to produce something documenting that process and approached Hartford Art School colleague Natacha Poggio about the possibility of having students from her Design Global Change program put together a catalog. Hartford Art School juniors Nikki Lee and Mullica Zudsiri, with Lee as team leader, were chosen to do just that.

“Why not (throw) another collaboration in this mix,” Balco said.

Participating Mind Sets artists are: Fritz Horstman, Zachary Keeting, Lucy Kim, Eva Lee, Martha Lewis, Laura Marsh, Kim Mikenis, Carol Padberg, Dushko Petrovich, Cuyler Remick, Matt Sargent and Bill Solomon, Susan Classen-Sullivan, and Paul Theriault.

Mind Sets is on view at Haskins Laboratories through January 28, 2011. Hours are Wednesday to Friday, 10am to 4pm. Haskins Laboratories is located at 300 George St., 9th floor, New Haven.



Aging artfully at Neighborhood Music School

Lucile Bruce

Students participate in a recent Dancing with Parkinson's class at Neighborhood Music School. Photo by Harold Shapiro.

“Reach forward … good … keep breathing …”

It’s Thursday morning at Neighborhood Music School, and I’ve stopped by the first floor recital hall to visit Vintage Voices, a dance and voice class for students ages 60 and over.

“Breathe …” repeats dance instructor Tracey Albert, who directs the students’ movements to co-teacher Ingeborg Schimmer’s piano accompaniment.

“Test your balance … arms up … reach forward …whatever height you’re at is good … even if it’s only a little off the floor …”

There’s a tremor in the room as the bodies stand on one leg, finding their balance. They move their raised legs forward and around, until the designated moment for putting feet to earth again.

“Good …” continues Albert. “Now give the other one a try …”

Adults try many things at Neighborhood Music School (NMS), and if the plethora of catalog listings is any indication, they do more than try. They persevere. They succeed.

They take private lessons. They dance. They study music theory. They join ensembles. Many say NMS provides them with highly fulfilling experiences through which they rediscover their potential later in life.

To live is to age. Science offers little insight into aging, the biological basis of which is unknown. Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, and others have attempted to describe the stages of life and how a person “ages well,” but no theory has risen to the top.

Recent studies have suggested, however, that a few things — more than lowering cholesterol or reducing stress — appear to help people live happier lives for longer: maintaining close relationships, having friends, exercising, and learning new things.

Since its founding in 1911, adult students have always been integral to NMS, whose mission is “to provide the highest quality instruction in music and dance and to make it accessible to people of all ages, backgrounds, economic means and levels of ability.” With its adult programs — including Vintage Voices, Dancing with Parkinson’s, and other courses specifically geared to older bodies — the school embraces its role as community-builder, health-provider, and place where people flourish having fun together.

“I want to get in touch, to increase my network of people,” says Bjorn Ljungstrom, a Vintage Voices student who has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair. “It’s important to have friends and make more friends.”

Vintage Voices includes a built-in social break; when I visited, students drank coffee, ate Dunkin’ Donuts, and chatted for 15 minutes before beginning serious voice training with Schimmer.

“The experience of a dance class is a social one,” notes Laura Richling, Dancing with Parkinson’s instructor and a piano teacher at NMS. Similarly, as Albert explains, social skills can be acquired through dance.

“We found that their movement skills were good, but they weren’t really paying attention to each other,” says Albert, who teaches several other classes at NMS and heads the school’s dance department. “When you’re a dancer you need to pay attention to the other person.”

For some adults, studying at NMS is, by design, a more solitary activity.

“It’s a blessing,” says piano student Donald Williams. “It’s a dream come true.”

Williams, the 54-year-old former manager of Sweet Relief on Audubon Street, plays the drums and briefly studied singing years ago, but life circumstances prevented him from pursuing music in the way he dreamed of doing.

Lisa Rovello, NMS’ marketing and public relations manager, learned of Williams’ interest in music when she was a Sweet Relief customer. She introduced Williams to NMS teacher Peter DiGennaro. Williams never looked back.

“Now I’m taking piano and he’s teaching me how to compose,” said Williams, describing his weekly 30-minute lesson with DiGennaro. “We’re trying sight-reading. I’ve got good rhythm and I have been studying, studying, studying the chords.”

Williams takes one 30-minute lesson each week. In addition, he practices at NMS.

“I’ll go over and lock myself in a room for an hour,” he explains. “I usually go in the evening to see if there’s a room available.”

In June, Williams received a Certificate of Merit for his dedication as a student.

“If I had my way, I would go there to learn everything about music,” says Williams of NMS. “I want to learn all aspects of it.”

His teacher is encouraging him to join an ensemble, where Williams feels he will be more a “part of the community.”

At NMS, individual instruction is available on many instruments. Students can take trial lessons before committing to a single teacher. A variety of professional-taught adult ensembles meet weekly. For string and wind players and pianists, NMS offers the Forever Young chamber music ensemble, Never-Too-Late Ensembles, Clarinet Choir, guitar ensembles, and the Yearlings Violin Ensemble. Students interested in non-classical music will find several jazz ensembles, the NMS Ragtime Stompers and blues and rock ensembles. The school offers group instrumental lessons on piano, guitar, recorder, violin, and voice.

Other adult classes include music listening, music history, songwriting, opera, sight singing and note reading, sound design, pedagogy and performance, and even a course in how to use Finale composing software.

As for dance, NMS offers ballet, yoga, Zumba, Exercise and Energize, and Embodied Movement for adults only. Adults and teens join together for jazz, hip-hop, tap, modern, salsa, and African dance.

NMS’ mission to make courses accessible to people of all economic means sometimes presents a challenge. Vintage Voices was originally funded by a grant; students paid “$12 for 12 classes,” recalls Albert. The original class was more diverse. “When the grant ended,” Albert continues, “we moved to a fee-based class and lost some of the population, and we are sad about that.”

Today, Vintage Voices participants pay $115 for 12 weeks of classes — still a bargain. By comparison, for group instruction in voice and piano (14 weeks, 45-minute classes), students pay $420. Private lessons are contracted in full-semester increments; minimum cost is $667.25 for 30-minute classes over 17 weeks. Ensemble rates vary depending on the number of players; students receiving individual instruction at NMS receive a discount.

Like many adults, Anne-Marie Foltz gave up her first instrument early in life.

“I abandoned the violin at age 12,” she says. “I didn’t particularly like my teacher. I was getting to be a teenager. It was a way of disobeying my parents.”

Throughout their lives as younger adults, Foltz recalls, she and her husband, Bill, professor emeritus of African-American Studies and Political Science at Yale, were very busy — but not with music.

“We were doing other things, building careers and raising children. Our sons took lessons at the Neighborhood Music School when they were growing up. I probably was jealous of them at the time,” she laughs.

Today, Anne-Marie Foltz has a beloved teacher in Grace Feldman, Ensemble Program Head at NMS, who teaches Foltz piano and recorder. Foltz plays in two NMS ensembles, including the Never-Too-Late Ensemble, satisfying her desire to make music with others.

Bill Foltz gave up the piano at age 12 — in his case, for football l— and now studies piano with Mary Bloom. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a progressive disease of the central nervous system, 10 years ago.

“I wish I could say I’m picking up where I left off at age 13,” says Foltz of his piano study. “But I was much better at 13. I’m a much slower learner now. I’m doing the piano not for any medical reason. I’m doing it because it’s just fun to play the piano and it’s a challenge. The instruction is really excellent.”

Foltz’s major project for the year: Mozart’s Variations on “Ah vous dirais-je, Maman” (“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”), K.265

“Mozart looks so simple,” says Foltz, “but he’s not.”

Foltz takes Vintage Voices with his wife, Anne-Marie. He’s also a student in Dancing with Parkinson’s, a weekly class designed for people with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers.

“It’s bonding and fellowship for people at different stages of the disease,” says Foltz, “and that for me is about as important as anything I get out of the movement.”

Richling has been deeply influenced by her training with the Brooklyn-based Mark Morris Dance Group, one of the world’s foremost dance companies. Mark Morris dancers have been teaching dance to Parkinson’s patients since 2001. In 2009, two teachers from the company came to New Haven as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and led a Parkinson’s dance workshop at NMS.

“I love their philosophy, which I’ve been learning,” says Richling. “It wasn’t something that I got immediately. It’s this: the essence of dance is joy.”

“It’s not a therapy session,” she explains. “It’s not a medical thing. It’s not an exercise class. It’s not specifically designed to bring about a list of benefits to the participants. It’s a dance class. And the reason for it is joy.”

That said, the class offers many tangible benefits, says Richling, who teaches another class in Middletown through the Connecticut Parkinson’s Working Group (CPWG). The benefits are difficult to quantify, in part because of the elusive nature of the disease.

“Parkinson’s is difficult to pin down — from person to person, and even within one person’s experience from day to day,” she explains. People experience a wide variety of symptoms but not necessarily in a predictable order, and not necessarily every day.

But, says Richling, “I’m not trying to teach Parkinson’s. I’m trying to teach dance. I have to take into account the movement challenges that this particular population tends to encounter, and I have to react to what I encounter in the specific people in front of me.”

One symptom that many people with Parkinson’s experience is social withdrawal. It makes sense: People don’t feel well, they can’t do a lot of the things they used to do, so they withdraw from their social circle.

“It’s also chemical,” Richling explains. “Things happen in the brain that can affect your socialization skills, so people can become anti-social.”

Dance class, by providing a social experience, helps people overcome their isolation.

“We move, we stretch, we breathe, we coordinate patterns of movement with different parts of the body, and we put it to music,” Richling says. “The benefits one might experience from that are what you might expect from stretching, breathing, working on coordination, and doing it to music.”

Participants experience the class very differently.

“Some people feel that for an hour and a quarter, they don’t have the disease,” Richling says. “If they have a tremor — an often-seen symptom — sometimes they find that by concentrating, focusing on the task at hand, the music makes the tremor go away.”

People with Parkinson’s often freeze and suddenly find they can’t move their limbs.

“Sometimes they find that they don’t have freezes in the class,” Richling notes, “or, if they freeze, having the music and the rhythm and direction from the instructor helps them to break out of the freeze.”

Music stimulates the brain. Songs from the 1950s and ’60s — when many of today’s Parkinson’s patients “came of age” as young adults — spark memories and create social interaction. And some people take the things they experience in Dancing with Parkinson’s and use them in daily life to improve their functioning.

Still, Richling cautions against itemizing the medical benefits of this or any NMS class.

“The essence of dance is joy,” she says. The arts are fun — and that’s consequential.

“Fun is an intrinsic part of our well-being,” she says. “And when you can’t feed yourself, or walk, or sleep very well, that’s what’s left.”

Back in Vintage Voices, the dance portion of the class is coming to an end.

“Freeze!” calls Albert. Yellow-scarf dancers collide with green-scarf dancers. The group explodes with laughter. It rises and fills the room, drowning out the speaking voices and the final notes of piano music.

As Richling would say, “You can analyze it on many different levels, or you can step back and say, ‘It’s just fun. It’s all good.’”



In the footsteps of guitar gods

Cynthia Weaver

	Ascendant electric guitar virtuoso Desiree Bassett. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Meet Desiree Bassett, an 18-year-old electric guitar player and recording artist from New Haven. Ms. Bassett was recently interviewed by Arts Paper contributing writer Cynthia Weaver. Here is a transcript of their conversation.

Q: As a child growing up in New Haven, you were described as a prodigy. How did you discover your passion for playing music?
A: I started playing at age 3. My dad has been my major influence in my life — it all started in the ’80s when he started playing the guitar while he was in the Marines.

Q: How many guitars do you have?
A: I own 17 guitars, but my favorite one is the 2008 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop 1960 Reissue.

Q: How much do you practice?
A: Generally, I practice about two hours a day, but when I am in the set mood, I can go as far as eight hours.

Q: Do you have your own band?
A: I do. It is a power trio band named Desiree (Bassett) and The Time Machine. Every now and then though, we have guests, family members, and close friends come up and join in on some songs.

Q: Do you mostly stick to rock music?
A: Mostly rock, but I play some blues and a little jazz, and I’m very open-minded with other music, as well.

Q: What’s the best part about being on stage?
A: Being offstage and being onstage is like almost being in two different worlds. Being offstage, I’m a pretty shy person, but onstage, I treat it like it is my home and that’s where I can really show what I’m all about.

Q: Do you travel to play?
A: The greatest place I’ve ever been was New Zealand — I headlined a few shows there and met some of the greatest artists and the greatest people, who I became good friends with. I would love to be able to go out to more places and play out of state and out of the country.

Q: Do you have any other hobbies?
A: I have a lot of other hobbies, such as drawing, dirt biking, painting, baking, fishing, ATV riding, making jewelry, and so much more. I love art and anything that keeps me active.

Q: Who has been your greatest influence?
A: My dad has always been my major influence in life, but to name a few others, as well, there’s Joe Satriani, Rik Emmett from Triumph, Dickey Betts, Jeff Beck, Ted Nugent, and Jimi Hendrix.

Q: What is the next step for you? Will you pursue a career in music?
A: Ever since I was really little, it has always been my dream to pursue music. I’ve always held on to what I have believed in, and I know for sure that it’s really what I want to do with my life. There might be a lot of hardships and sacrifices along the way, and I am highly aware of what I may be getting myself into. But this is something that I’ve dreamed of doing for so long ... I know this is what I want in life.

Q: Do you have any advice for young people who want to become great musicians?
A: My advice to the younger musicians is always to practice, hold on to what you truly believe in, and, most important, listen to your parents’ advice. I have learned so much from my parents and I am fortunate enough to be where I am now because of their love and support. Family is the closest thing you can possibly have, and no one could ever be there for you as much as they have been.

Learn more about Desiree Bassett at www.dbassett.com.

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