♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders who dedicate their
time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations on our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with Julia LaGrand, a classical violinist
from Grand Rapids in Michigan.
You can find the resources mentioned by Julia LaGrand during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
♪ [Violin Partita No.1 in B minor, BWV 1002 Double (Sarabande) - Johann Sebastian Bach] ♪
♪ [End of the excerpt.] ♪
Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today, I am with Julia LaGrand, who is a classical violinist
from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Welcome Julia.
Hello. It's so lovely to be here.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for being here with us today.
Okay, so you have a lot of things
related to advocacy for young musicians,
for specifically, young classical musicians with disabilities.
Before talking about that, I wanted to know a little bit about you,
how you started in your musical journey, what triggered the fact
that you started violin and everything that happened at the very beginning.
Awesome. So, I have been playing violin for most of my life.
I started when I was five years old, really just because my mom
asked me if I would be interested.
She wanted to help give me
a social space that might be less
bound by normative communication.
I think it can be hard for some blind children to fit in
with sighted peers or to feel feel like they fit in with sighted peers.
She wanted to really give me a clear space where music was central.
She hoped that in that space, my disability would be a bit less central
to how people perceived me.
It also, I think, just gave me a great other way to communicate beyond
the daily, our typical standard ways of communicating,
communicating through music, making friendships through music, playing with other people.
All of those things are so central, and I think were so
helpful to me as a young person.
I didn't take it super seriously for many years.
It was a lot of practicing
when my mom told me to and not really having a ton of motivation to do it myself.
But eventually, as I grew up and matured, I realized that I really, really
loved it, and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life pursuing music.
Very nice.
Are you using Braille music to learn your music?
My journey and exploration of accessible formats has definitely
been a bit on the complicated side, and I think I'm still in the middle of it.
I started with the Suzuki method,
where everyone learns by ear.
So that premise of that method is that that for the first year or so,
no one is using printed notation, which is part of the reason why it seemed like
such a good fit for me to start there, because my parents weren't
super aware of what notation might be available to me as a blind person.
So I then kept going by ear
much longer than my sighted peers.
And I learned a bit of Braille music when I was nine 10, but I didn't fully
commit to incorporating it into my music.
I worked on piano pieces that way, partly because I was
just so much less advanced on the piano.
I took piano lessons very sporadically.
So the music was not very complex, which made it easier to read in braille.
And also I could read with one hand and play one hand on the piano.
So I was able to read and play at the same time.
And one of the things that can be a bit complicated about Braille music as
a violinist is that I have to memorize everything before I can put it
on the violin because it takes hands to read braille,
and it takes two hands to play the violin.
So in that case, in that instance,
Braille music kind of fell off for me.
I then rediscovered it during my sophomore year of high school
when I had too much time on my hands in the pandemic, and so I decided
to dig into Braille music again.
I definitely pursued it further
to the point where I do feel comfortable
reading it, and I use it for some things.
I use it for reference, definitely, to get more details about a score.
I just finished one year of Conservatory at the New England Conservatory of Music,
and it was extremely helpful to have that in my solfege classes
where the emphasis is on sight-singing
and it was useful to have in chorus,
these places where you do so much singing
that I could read the music and sing at the same time because
my hands were not required for the music making in those instances.
I found Braille music super helpful there.
I think that as I get more comfortable with Braille music,
as I continue to integrate it more in my life, I will use it more.
But I also do really love using various other formats.
I do a lot of listening to recordings, but I also do work with computerized files
so that I can get a more objective look at the music, which is something
that Braille allows me to do as well.
But to really perceive the exact duration of every note,
the exact markings that the composer had, that's all available in different
accessible formats on the computer, so I can scroll character by character,
hear the note, and hear various attributes.
But I can also then hear larger phrases in MIDI output and things like that.
So that's a bit of a long answer, but my journey is always
evolving in that direction.
I love long answers.
I wanted to know, what software are you using for your digital files?
At this point, I am using the Dancing Dots Suite mostly.
That has the Lime Aloud component.
That is where I'm getting a lot of the MIDI output, so I can
have it play phrases or chunks.
But then I can also in Lime Aloud scroll, and it will read the attributes
of each note, as I mentioned, and If I hook up a Braille display,
Lime Aloud also allows me to
view those same measures in Braille as I scroll through them.
Part of that suite is also Goodfeel, which allows me to transcribe
the whole thing into Braille, which is a really helpful tool
to get quick Braille transcription.
But I tend to gravitate more towards Lime Aloud so that
I can have the Braille and the audio at the same time, because I personally
find that a faster workflow for me.
But it's a very personal thing, of course.
There are lots of different softwares that other blind people use to access
their music in tons of creative ways.
When you need a new score, where do you go?
That's always a bit complicated.
Musescore.org has a lot of open source XML files
because I can access very well
these music XML files through Lime Aloud.
And so there are a lot of those available, particularly for the kinds of
very canonical public domain classical pieces that I'm playing.
A fair number of those are available.
But transcription services are also very useful, whether
that's in refining the Braille output.
I do use transcription for that because the automatic Braille is super helpful,
but it can be good to get a slightly more accurate picture with
a professional transcribers take on it.
But also, part
of the dancing dots suite is a scanner.
One can scan music into basically
PDF format and then convert it into XML.
Now, there tends to be still quite a few errors depending on the quality
of the music, how clear it is, it can be
varying degrees of difficult for the computer to understand what's going on.
It's still pretty important to have someone sighted proofing the XML file
to make sure that everything on the page was captured in that conversion process.
Then once I have it in an XML, I can use it in Lime Aloud, or I can also
get a more accurate Braille transcription, as I mentioned.
When you were a student, or you are currently a student,
I was wondering about the efforts
it might have taken to receive the amount
of accommodation that you need.
Did you work with teachers saying,
Well, I need this specific format,
or let's figure out another way to play together or to learn.
What was the amount of effort you had to put on that?
I would say that the greatest amount
of effort I have had to put in
is figuring out how to communicate my needs clearly and effectively.
This is something I've thought a lot about because I did lots of programs
for blind high schoolers geared towards getting people ready
to do a self-advocacy in college.
It was always something I didn't feel particularly jaunted by.
I felt that I understood my needs.
I knew how to communicate, and I felt like I had it under control.
But I think music felt like
a very different way to approach
that self-advocacy question, because at least in my case, I didn't really
have experience taking pretty much any of the classes I needed to take.
It wasn't like I was taking a more advanced math class
or a more advanced science class.
I didn't have music theory instruction in my high school or anything like that.
So as I did my freshman year at New England Conservatory, I really felt like
I didn't have as good of a sense of my needs as I would have wanted to, because
I had never been in those situations.
And so I think a lot of my self-advocacy
was experimentation, and then learning
how to really effectively communicate the results of my experimentation.
And I think like every situation, there's going to be mixed inputs.
There were teachers who were very willing
to work with me, but a lot of them didn't
have much experience working with a blind musician or had experience
working with blind musicians who had very different sets of needs.
I am someone who doesn't want to do just everything by ear
and so that was definitely different for even the teachers who had worked
with blind musicians in the past.
And so there's definitely a range of, these are my needs,
even though they might not be the same as the needs of the blind students who have come before me.
And so that, I think, is also a bit of a tricky question, right?
Articulating that all blind people are different, just like
all people are different, and we all have different needs.
And so that was a layer.
And then, yeah, I think it's just a matter of the perceptions, too, that people
have around what blind musicians should or would want to access.
There are definitely lots of biases
towards the supremacy of visual notation.
So I've heard definitely concerns
that Braille music lacks things
that visual notation conveys.
And that has been something interesting to work through in this space
of accommodations, too, is I understand
that I am accessing things in a
very different way than my sighted appears.
And sometimes that does look like audio, sometimes that does look
like Braille notation.
And so it's a matter of not only understanding my needs, but me feeling
comfortable with the fact that I will be doing things a bit differently and I will
be bringing things together creatively.
I think that's almost as important as knowing my needs is feeling confident
in the way I approach things and feeling that I don't have to justify
my access to music at every turn.
Plus, there is the fact that even
if you read visually the score,
well, sorry, but the notation is not all about the music.
You also have to put your own personality in the way you are performing your music.
If the piano, fortissimo notation,
whatever, the crescendo notation
is something you can feel, well, go for it and have that integrated
in your own personality and performance.
Definitely.
I think it's also such an interesting question, too, of how you feel that
and how you take the recordings and
the oral traditions that have come before.
Because there, I think there's sometimes attitudes that one shouldn't
listen to too many performances. And while I totally...
Of a piece one's working on, and I totally think that makes sense
to some extent, and I would never want to copy any individual's
interpretation of a piece, because music is about making individual art.
But I also think that part of making art is understanding the context
from which it has come and the ways people have shaped it in the past.
I think understanding things orally
and understanding by listening is a
very totally valid way to approach music.
I don't think that's the dominant attitude in a lot
of spaces around classical music.
You're right. As a musicologist, I can tell you I love studying the different versions
and recording how it evolved in the time.
Even the way an editor will edit the score
is fascinating because an editor
has the same mindset as a performer who's going to say, Okay, the way
I see it, the way I understand this composer wrote it is this way.
But that's personal.
Yeah, I find it fascinating.
Where are you right now in your studies?
I did my freshman year at New England Conservatory in Violin Performance, and I
felt that the performance education I was getting was fantastic, but that I wanted
to explore a bit further and to have a bit broader of a liberal arts education.
I am transferring programs and
because of the structure of the degrees,
I will be starting over functionally.
So I will be starting as a freshman in
the Harvard and NEC dual degree combined
bachelor's master's program this fall.
Wow, that's awesome.
Thank you. Looking forward to it.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
You had a series of awards during
the past years.
What award did you get?
Well, the most recent award I have gotten was
I was very honored to be selected as
a winner of the 2024 Kennedy Center's VSA,
International Young Musicians' Competition,
which is a program that highlights
young musicians aged 14 to 25 with disabilities.
I was a finalist in that last year, and this year, I'm a winner.
I will have the opportunity to perform
at the Kennedy Center, which is a wonderful gift,
and I am really excited to have received this award.
I think it's such an opportunity to connect with disabled musicians,
and I really do love programs that help disabled musicians
connect with each other.
I've also participated in the Bella Competition, and I won that competition
in 2020, and that is geared towards blind musicians more specifically.
That was also a really great way to connect with the other blind finalists.
It's so exciting to form community through awards like this.
I think it's really lovely.
Congratulations. thank you.
That's pretty good.
When are you performing at the Kennedy Center?
That performance is July 27.
So after this recording, but before this airs.
Wow, in a few days. That's fantastic.
I wonder if you could talk about a specific project project
that you have worked on and that was really important for your career?
Thank you.
I think one of the projects closest to my heart was the work
I did with NPR's From the Top.
From the Top is a show highlighting classical musicians
aged 8 to 18 in the United States.
I first appeared on the show
in 2021 as a performer, and I was
the first blind performer on the show and so
it got me thinking about
the ways in which it would be really fascinating to have an episode
highlighting disability, both to let disabled musicians really
intentionally talk about their disabilities and to really have space
for these disabled musicians to talk about other things.
Because sometimes when a performer
with a disability comes on to any
interview or any public appearance, it can be really easy for the focus just
to be on the disability because that's a really obvious
contributor, or often an obvious contributor,
to who they are as a musician.
But for a lot of musicians, it's a central part of them,
but it is only one really important part of their identity. And so
the interview segments of this show, because it highlights both interviews
and performances by young musicians, really, I thought, could be a great place
to allow disabled musicians to tell their stories in the way
they wanted them to be told.
And so I came to From the Top with the idea of creating a
specifically disability-focused episode, and they agreed, and they really
helped me lead the project, which was an incredible experience.
So I got so much knowledge just from
working through with them the process
of trying to recruit different people, trying to reach out to different networks,
that it took a while to really figure out how to connect well and how to
really find these musicians who...
Because there are so many musicians with disabilities, but so many
of those disabilities are not apparent.
It can be a complicated thing to decide to be on a program
that does highlight disability. But we...
From the Top found just excellent, excellent young musicians
to be featured on the program.
That was just a fantastic joy to then be able to hear these young musicians
to play their pieces, to interview them, to get to know them.
They were all just wonderful individuals.
As part of the program, we also did social media work that allowed an
even greater number of disabled musicians to highlight their talents
because we only did one episode.
And of course, that really only let four young people
get that spot in the episode.
So the Social Media Daily Joy campaign that From the Top puts together
was another way for many more disabled artists to be spotlighted.
And so that was a program I was really excited about to broaden.
We also did a - In collaboration with the Kennedy Center,
we put on a panel of disabled professional
musicians as a way to really
continue the dialog with the From the Top community about
after being a young musician, transitioning into being a professional,
because that transition can also, I think,
feel daunting for everyone and for people, for musicians
with disabilities in particular. Those are the components of it.
I'm so grateful that I was able to go host the show and to lead
that panel and just be really involved in all of that process.
It was an incredible experience.
I learned so much from this episode you recorded, you co-hosted.
I really, really enjoyed.
For example, Joaquín Rodrigo is blind and you are pointing out,
you're educating people and saying, not a lot of people know that he's blind,
and he was using Braille music and his wife was transcribing it.
But also this young 14 years old called Tristen Chen.
Yeah.
He's fantastic. He's full of energy and things like that.
It was really fantastic.
But one of the parts that really was the highlight of the episode
was your interview with Itzhak Perlman.
Yes, thank you.
That was an incredible experience for me to be able to interview him.
He has been someone I've looked up to for such a long time, obviously
as just an incredible violinist, but also someone who's taken
disability advocacy really seriously.
And I think that has always served to me as a powerful example of
how disability advocacy can be combined with a career of performance.
And I do remember discovering
that Perlman was disabled.
And to me, that was a transformative moment because there was this person
who, obviously, everyone looks up as having this incredible career.
And to learn that that person was also disabled felt just incredibly empowering
to me because I think I spent a long time
feeling like there were
not many representations of disability in classical music,
and I still feel that way to some extent.
But before I found various communities
that I'm now really a part of.
I think Itzhak Perlman was my first
major signifier that one could be disabled
and do classical music at, obviously, this just incredibly high level.
And beyond that, I think, as I said, the
fact that he had this career, but also
that he took the time to be passionate
about these advocacy concerns and that he
prioritizes increasing access.
I think that was also just really powerful when I discovered that because
that is something I have always wanted to be part of my career as well.
What is interesting with Itzhak Perlman is that at the time when he was a child
and he was discovered on TV,
he was in the spotlight.
But then when he developed his career and he recorded and he collaborated with all
these great musicians around the world.
He was known as a recording artist or as a performer artist.
Actually, If you didn't go and attend one of the concerts,
you had no idea that he had a disability.
Today, we have more means of helping
representation and presence
of artists with disabilities because we have internet, because
sometimes we have TV, we have RAMPD.
We are both part of this organization called RAMPD, doing a fantastic job
of just trying to highlight the work of disabled artists.
But in the classical world, if you didn't
go to or look at this particular
TV program where he was playing or go to a concert, you had no way
of knowing that he had a disability.
So he started speaking about his disability a little later in life when he
was saying, Okay, I'm using crutches, and I have this
routine of giving my violin to someone who's going to play with me,
and then I'm going with my crutches, and then someone is giving me the violin,
most of the time the conductor, or if he was playing in quartet,
it was one of the members of the quartet, for example.
But really, it's like when you think of it, at a certain point of his career,
he said, Okay, enough is enough.
I'm going to advocate now.
That's fantastic.
We need more people like that.
I believe you are the part of the generation really shaking our generation
saying, Okay, we also have young artists with disabilities who are here,
and we need a voice and a presence.
So thank you for doing what you're doing.
Yeah. Well, thank you.
And thank you all of your work, facilitating so much of that conversation
in all of the ways that you and your organization do.
And I do think it is fascinating, even just reading about and discussing
with him that sort of transition from going to
not at all talking about the disability
to making it an important part of how he talks about access.
And I do think it is
such a personal decision for every artist
with a disability, the extent to which they want to talk about it.
And I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to do that,
because I think for me, it's just a crucial part of who I am artistically.
I think disability really does enhance the way I look at the world.
I think that disability is such a powerful
and creative, artistic force.
I am really excited to talk about the fact that I am an artist with a disability.
I'm grateful for all the opportunities that I get to do that.
That's great. I wonder if you could talk about
the people who inspired you in your musical journey
or maybe had a particular space in your musical journey and that might
have influenced the way you are an advocate today or the way
you are performing today?
There are so many, and that's, of course, such a big question.
I think I have been so fortunate to have so many incredible teachers.
I am so grateful to all of them.
And there have been so many ways in which they have encouraged me
to develop my advocacy skills, which has been really important to me.
I studied with Danielle Belen in high school, and I now
study with Miriam Fried in college.
And they have both been always
challenging me to make my music making central to my artistry,
but also to consider the bigger story I'm telling and the way I can use
my music to shape the world more broadly.
Specifically in the disability space, I think one really important
mentor to me has been Adrian Anantawan.
His work has always just excited me.
And I was able to meet him when he
performed at the Grand Rapids Symphony two or three years ago.
And from then on, I was so excited to interact with this disabled artist
who is making advocacy and and education, such a big part of his career.
And since then, I have moved to Boston, which is where he's based.
And so he has been an important mentor to me in Boston.
I've gotten the chance to play with him and to really be mentored
by him in more intentional ways.
And that has been so crucial to me to have
an artist in my life who is really
pursuing these joint goals of musical excellence and important collaboration
and advocacy work and education.
And so he's someone who has really inspired me to think more critically
about the ways I can expand my vision for my future.
Well, I wish you all the best in everything you're doing right now.
Don't hesitate. If we can help at ArtsAbly to promote something or to...
If you have a roundtable that is happening or a concert that is happening,
or if we can help promote the young musicians with disabilities in classical world,
don't hesitate to send that to us.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much for having me here
and just for all of the work that ArtsAbly is doing.
It's such an impressive organization, and I'm so happy
to be part of this conversation. So thank you.
Thank you. Well, have a great day and talk soon.
Thank you. Bye bye.
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