Episode 3.11 - Azalea Laredo

In Episode 11, we are excited to chat with Azalea Laredo, Stage Director, opera singer, and choral educator. Azalea talks with us about her musical journey in Mexico vs. in the US, building voice and Spanish studios, and teaching during a pandemic as an educator. 

To learn more about Azalea and her platforms, check out the links below!

Website: https://www.azalealaredo.com/ 

Azalea’s Spanish YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4VRh4_FSZqo0iH5TsuInQ

Azalea’s profile at TakeLessons: https://takelessons.com/profile/azalea-l 

People can watch more videos and take group classes with me on TakeLessons Live - https://takelessons.com/live 

Full Transcript

Carrie Blosser 0:00

Welcome to the third season of Diversify the Stand. Together, we speak with a wide range of musicians who talk about topics that are important to them. I'm Carrie Blosser.

Ashley Killam 0:08

And I'm Ashley Killam. We're so excited to dive into talks with a whole bunch of guests this season. If you like following along and are a fan of our podcast, please leave us a five star rating and review.

Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. We're so excited to talk with you.

Azalea Laredo 0:29

Thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

Ashley Killam 0:31

We would love to start off just by hearing a little bit about your musical journey into what you currently do.

Azalea Laredo 0:38

Yes, of course. So, I grew up in Mexico. I'm originally from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. Over there, I started by asking my mom one day out of nowhere, apparently, I was like, "I want to be a singer." And so she's like, "okay." She's a doctor, and my dad's a doctor, so the only musical, artistic thing was my sister. That's a classic Bella dancer. It was very out of nowhere. It was like, "Okay, music. Well, we don't know anyone in the family who plays anything." And I'm like "Okay." So...had to look up voice lessons there, and she came across this teacher, took me for a voice lesson. And the teacher was like, "Yeah, you have a very nice little soprano." She's like, "Okay, I don't know what that is, but great." So, I started with lessons grew up singing some like pop music and Disney songs, things like that. I started singing when I was about eight years old. So, little baby me singing and everything, you know. Grew up to middle school. I changed teachers to a bigger school, so we started doing like larger productions like musical theater, a little bit more opera. And then...then in high school, the question was, "Okay, what are you going to do after high school? What are you going to study?" And in Mexico, it's very hard to study just music and dedicate yourself to that like full time. So, the rule from my parents was "Okay, if you stay in Mexico, you have to...and you want to study music, you also have to study something else, a real career." So that was like the rule there. "Or if you want to study music, just full time, you can do it abroad. You can go somewhere else with a scholarship or something to study there." So, we had a cousin that was teaching piano in Brownsville, Texas. and she was like, "Hey, they're giving scholarships for international students here. And you know, it's not too far from Mexico. It's like pretty close to the border, and you might be interested." So I did it. I auditioned, and they offered me a scholarship. I was like, "Oh, great." Because I didn't know what I was going to study. I didn't want to study, you know, go to med school. And everyone was like, "Oh, engineering architecture." I'm like "Ehhhh, I'm a singer. I don't know anything else." So it was obvious if I get a scholarship, I can do it abroad. That's...I don't have to study anything else. Like it can be my thing, could be like full time. So, I went to Brownsville to study music, and I did my bachelor's in vocal performance. After that, the most logical thing at that time, being an international student - you need a visa and you need permission to stay in the US - was to do your masters. I auditioned, and I got accepted to the University of North Carolina Greensboro. And I started my masters in vocal performance. But then, a semester in, it's obviously a bigger school than Brownsville was, snd they had directors. They had stage managers. They had conductors, everything, you know, pretty, pretty cool. And I was able to see the other aspects of what takes to make an opera production. Back in Brownsville, we did like the opera with a piano, you know, no conductor. It was just like "Work with your pianists. Good luck." Which was great, you know, for us. But then here's "Okay, you have full orchestra. You have to work with a conductor." So this is so exciting! And what is this opera director? Back in Brownsville, it was just my teacher staging operas, and here is like "There's so many other aspects. It is very interesting. I don't want to just perform anymore. I think I have other ideas. I want to be able to communicate them in a different way. I want to be a director. I want to study." And so, I did my research. The two, three schools in the US that had a master's in opera directing. So my parents of course were like freaking out like "You are going to stop doing your masters and move to a different like area? No, that is crazy!" I was like "No, this is happening. They are accepting students right now. They only accept a handful of students for this masters in Austin. Not too far from Mexico, you know. It's not like I'm moving to New York; very expensive." So, I auditioned, and I got it. That was a very amazing moment. I was able to do my masters in opera directing. I met my back then girlfriend in Austin. So the year I graduated, we got married, and she joined the Navy. And from there, it was just like a lot of moving around. So, involved a lot of little summer directing operas, lots of teaching voice, lots of teaching piano, lots of early childhood education groups, and just like being following her around. Right now, we landed here in Chicago, and I am working as a program manager for a school called The People's Music School. It's basically 100% tuition free school for students that would not be able to afford any music lessons. If they didn't have this, this scholarship this school.

Carrie Blosser 5:44

That's great. Azalea, you're such a great storyteller. I definitely am looking forward to more opera directing in your future because I think you have such a nice arc and the way you tell stories.

Azalea Laredo 5:54

Oh, thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Carrie Blosser 5:57

You were mentioning just a couple minutes ago about kind of how in Mexico, to being able to study music was actually really challenging in like a more classical music sense. We'd love to hear a little bit more about how things worked in your town in terms of music education and comparatively to what we would maybe see in the US.

Azalea Laredo 6:15

Yes, it's definitely different. Over there, at least where I grew up in Monterrey, the city, there's a conservatory of music, and it's a big conservatory that has music, has dance. You can do...basically start your career when you're in high school. The difference...the problem is that this career in for example, voice, it's eight years long, takes you eight years to graduate with a bachelor's, the equivalent of a bachelor's in Mexico. Eight years, which is crazy. I mean, you can start studying when you're 15. That's like the minimal age that you can start first year voice over there. But, it's a long time, eight years, just studying. Definitely back then, there was a handful of people that were able to graduate that actually made it, did the eight years, graduated with his bachelor's. Back then it was like, "Well, where are they? Are they like New York, the MET?" No, they're teaching voice here, still, you know? Do you really want to study eight years and then just end up not really doing that much of a difference, just like teaching something that you could still do in your free time? Like it was just it didn't make sense. The rule was like, "You have to study something, something else to be able to support yourself. And then you can do the music for fun." So that was very different than in the US, when we were looking for universities and how long the career was, or the bachelor's was, what was the opportunity after that? That was so much different. I mean, you work with so many people, and you know, you can do the music education route, you can do the performing route. After that, you can teach in schools, you can teach choir or orchestra or band. In Mexico, you don't have that. My school, we had once a year a choir competition for the national anthem. And it was a, you know, a period of I don't even know like three months of a music teacher from somewhere else, not even worked full time at that school. No, it was like once a week for an hour, he would come to school and we would just run through the national anthem over and over and over. That was our choir experience. In this competition, actually, they had two categories: the schools that have a music teacher and the schools that don't have, and that's all of us. We like competing against each other, so you don't have bands. You don't have choir. It's not like the schools here in the US. You don't have that many opportunities, and so, if one wants to sing or wants to learn an instrument, you have to do it privately. You have to go to like a music academy or some other school...the conservatory if you're super into it or very good at it. It was just eye-opening how in the US you could have so many more opportunities after you know these four years, and then you can do your masters and then you can have a doctorate in music. You cannot do that in Mexico! That is just crazy. So, very very different. The other thing that is different is the system of how you learn music because over there, I grew up learning "fixed do" for example. "Fixed do," and then in the school in the US it was "movable do," and that was like "What? How do you do this? Wait what?" It was so such a culture shock as well. And for me, the good thing is that I don't have perfect pitch, so I was able to move or adapt or make myself understand, "Okay, this is fine. This makes sense." Other people that were also from Mexico were like "No, that's not do. No, that makes no sense. You can call that do because that is not the C key!" Yeah, it was very very hard for them. So that was another big difference, relearning a little bit of the system. And even now, I cannot go through like the strings of a violin and think letters. I have to go Sol Re La Mi, and then "G...D..." Like, I have to translate very fast in my head, because that's how I learned I was just like, With solfege?" And then "Okay, what's that in letters? Okay." And also in English. You don't use letters in Spanish, so it's all so hard. It's a different system. How do you want to learn it? Do you want to learn "fixed do?" "Moveable do?" Do you want to learn it in English, or do you want to learn it in Spanish? Because that's also different, different terminology, and it just makes no sense. You cannot call a half note literally a half note. It's called a white note in Spanish. Like, it's just different. So I know, I know. It's kind of crazy. But yeah, that was another difference from studying in Mexico, and then moving to the US and communicating working with people. It's fun. You learn lots of different things.

Ashley Killam 11:03

That's great. And a lot of things like you didn't think about, you wouldn't think that this is something that happens. But, when you're in that situation, there's a whole lot to learn.

Azalea Laredo 11:13

Oh, yeah, snd the jokes are different, too. You know, that English joke of the "Here comes trouble, trouble or treble? Because it sounds like...you cannot do that in Spanish! It's like, "How do you make that funny?" I don't know. I cannot translate that joke, though, the right way.

Ashley Killam 11:33

And in addition to teaching, having like built up a studio and having to do this in a pandemic, you started teaching Spanish lessons too, and we'd love to hear because I know a lot of people have dealt with this, and a lot of current music educators are thinking about building up studios, and can you talk about any advice about just the process of building and establishing a program in whatever area it may be?

Azalea Laredo 12:01

Of course, yes, yes, yes. So, when I graduated in Austin from my master's in opera directing, I also got married, and my wife joined the Navy. So, it was right away we knew we're going to have to move a lot. We were gonna...we knew we were just going to be in Austin for a little bit while she was training, and then we were going to go to Navy music school. And we didn't know if that was going to be six months, a year. We didn't know if we were going to stay there or they were going to move us. The options were like "You could go to Italy. You could move to Hawaii." At that point, I was like "Oh, I don't know what to do!" So I couldn't get a job, like a full time job after graduation because I knew I was gonna leave. And the logical...I was like "I need a job that can be moved with me wherever I go. And wherever I follow my wife." So I thought "Well, internet, online, digital, you know, technology. Maybe I can teach music online. Let me do my research." And so I came across this website called Take Lessons that started as a music, just music lessons online. You could teach online using their platform, or you could teach in-person and they would just connect you. Basically they will handle the schedule, they will handle payments, things like that. It's like "Okay, this is this sounds fun." So I...when I started signing up for that, I saw that some of the subjects that they offered were also languages. You could also teach English or French, Spanish, and I was like "I know Spanish@ I speak Spanish@ I could probably also offer this subject." So I was offering voice, piano...there was a subject for musical theater. I'm like "Sure, you know, music theory, if someone is preparing for exams, I can do that. And I can also do Spanish." So yeah, all my subjects are there. I put my work experience description, I made a little video of myself introducing myself offering these things and put it on the website. A little bit later, I got my first student in Spanish. The first student that I got, the first request, it was in Spanish. My whole description was music, music masters, you know, music, vocal performance, experience teaching blah, blah, blah, native Spanish speaker at the very like, by the way. And my first student was like "I really like your video that you were introducing yourself, and I really like your accent. I want to learn Spanish from someone who grew up in Mexico. I want it." So, I started teaching this students Spanish, and it took off. All the students you know, maybe I got a request one or two questions about piano lessons that didn't quite match my schedule. So I couldn't take those students, but everyone else was Spanish. And that was cool. That's awesome. So we moved to Virginia Beach. We were there for a little bit. I was teaching Spanish at home, moved with me my whole studio online super easy. Then, they shipped us to California. So there you go to the west, and my whole studio came with me, everyone was there, right? And then in San Diego, California, teaching online and everything I was like "Well, I guess we're settled here for a little bit. I can look for a job teaching music, hopefully." Because I also...there was a point that I was just teaching Spanish. And I was like "But I also have music as my career, and I miss it. I also want to incorporate a little bit of it, like I haven't directed anything." The only offers like I did, where the summers that there was a young artist program in San Diego. Those are the places where I was able to direct little things, but it was like "I miss music in my life." So, I got a job to a music school there for piano, voice, early childhood, lots of classes. Yeah, I started teaching there and of course kept the studio...kept the studio going, the Spanish classes. I got also invited on this website to teach group classes because they liked the videos that I was posting just as the descriptions or helping students. So, they invited me to the program that they have called Take Lessons Live. And I was teaching group Spanish classes for people all around the world. And that took care of us driving or moving around. But yeah, I was teaching music over there, teaching my Spanish lessons. And then guess what happened? COVID happened! And the world falls apart, right? School has to close, you know, you cannot teach music in-person anymore. We kind of tried online, and that didn't work. Everything falls apart. And what I have as my safety net is my online studio that has been there the whole time. I was still able to teach my private Spanish students, the group classes. So it was super helpful for me as a freelancer or just self-employed, to have that safety net that was able to be moving with me since Austin. And you know, that helped us a lot. I was able to take some of the students that I had in the music school because they had to close. They told us you know "Take the students if you want them." Of course, I added them to my to my online teaching. So I was able to teach piano, I was still able to teach voice and Spanish. It's definitely hard managing. You have to be in charge of the schedule and just coordinating that everything's okay. Of course, you have to build your own curriculum and share the resources and homeworks...things like that. Lots of communication with the parents. But these platforms like Take Lessons like they helped me maybe not having to chase parents around to be like, "No, pay the invoice, please." But very, very helpful in the way that when pandemic hits, sometimes you have this little safety net. And I was very lucky that the students that I had didn't leave. They were able to keep going with the lessons, you know, because of course, lots of people lost jobs and everything. But I was very lucky, very lucky at that time that I was able to keep my Spanish and adding some music classes there as well. Lots of challenging things, but also very rewarding. Like I'm in California, and I can be teaching someone in Austin, or I can be teaching someone all the way across the country. You can connect, and you can teach, and they learn, and they grow with you. Like I have students that been with me for more than a year. It's like "Oh, you're so big now!" So that's very exciting as well. And that no matter where I am, I can still do it. Even if I was in my family in Mexico for a week, I can still teach from there. So fun.

Carrie Blosser 18:58

Yeah, I remember when you almost were sent to a timezone that maybe would not have worked as well as the central time versus West Coast time.

Azalea Laredo 19:07

Oh, yes. Oh, yes, definitely. Those changes of time zones are complicated. Sometimes.

Carrie Blosser 19:14

We were working with people who were in the UK, and the UK does daylight savings at a different time. And I remember there was a few weeks of our podcasts that were like "Okay, this is what time it is here. We think it's this time there." Getting everything clear, so I think that communication is definitely really helpful. So, you explain this really well, But I would love...I think there are people who are listening on the podcasts that are in similar situations of kind of piecing together schedules to put together. Like you're saying, you were teaching a lot of Spanish, and you really missed actually doing music. But I think we'd love to hear your advice for teachers or educators that are looking to kind of piece together schedules, and what did you find helpful, and then what was maybe something that didn't work for you?

Azalea Laredo 19:56

Absolutely, for schedules that are so tricky sometimes to put together. Something that helped me a lot, it was just train myself into always think timezone. When I'm writing an email, I would be like "Okay, your class, you know later on Sunday blah blah blah at 2pm Pacific Time, you know, parentheses 4pm Central Time." That kind of training of "I'm going to restrain myself to always add that extra just to be safe." And that also helps the families that I was working with and my students also kind of train them into look a little bit past just the number,just double check the timezone, right. They knew, I told them I'm moving from Central Time to Pacific Time, so they knew that I would do this in the emails or text. They would get that timezone thing. Google Calendar was helpful too because I was able to put when I was good putting my event, basically my class, I was able to say like, you know, "Spanish with Carrie at 2pm," and select my students timezone. So even if I was moving around, and for some reason visiting my family Monterrey and then flying back to San Diego, and my location is kind of messed up, I can still just see "Okay, this is the time zone. Let me just double check...think...okay, yes. This is my future. This is my past. This is where I am." Definitely using those tools. The platform that I'm working with, Take Lessons, also does that. So, they list the timezone, they show the timezone for the student in their own time. I definitely had those moments of "What time of day. Wait, I mean, am I in California or am I in Mexico or where am I?" And have to, like, do that. And I definitely have that moment where, for some reason that I don't understand, in Arizona, they don't change the the time and like daylight savings. And so, I had one student from there, and you know, it's Sunday, the time changes, my schedule is "Okay, everything's good, right?" Everyone's an hour, later, whatever. And, and then suddenly, it's like, "Hey, where are you?" "What do you mean?" Suddenly, this student's lesson was overlapping with the previous - or the next, I don't remember - student. I was like "Wait, how?" And I couldn't figure out like "Why? So what time is it over there?" Kind of crazy, but it only happened one time. Advices for other teachers is definitely double-check, triple-check, just in case. My plan was always to have Mondays of music and Tuesdays of Spanish and Wednesdays of music again, things like that. But you know, sometimes it's hard to do that, so I would have them mixed up. I would, whenever they were available, I was available. And sometimes I had a piano class, then a Spanish, then a voice, different all combined...but definitely tried my best to block time to perhaps not work back-to-back-to-back-to-back because that was just crazy. Definitely have those days that I was like "What was I thinking?" So definitely have some time blocked for "This is going to be my time where I'm going to be offering lessons." And you know "I'm going to have the mornings to plan," or "I'm going to have the afternoons to just regather my my thoughts." Block yourself and time for lunch as well because I also...definitely. My wife was like "Did you eat?" I'm like "I'm teaching. But do you have time at two? I'm teaching." Or like "Do you have like 15 minutes? And like "Maybe like at five!" You know, like so late. And block yourself a time to relax, eat something, together, whatever works for you. Like if it was easier to just do a day of piano then your mind is like "Piano piano piano piano." For me sometimes it's like "Piano, the keyboard, run with the computer to the keyboard and then okay, Spanish, I can do it on my desk." Or things like that. Yeah, it's a challenge. Also, if you're teaching online, another thing that was hard for me was just sitting for the longest periods of time. Just sitting for six hours or so just teaching. I was able to get like a little stand up desk. I was able to stand up, which was also very helpful for voice students because I was able to show different things and just posture and people think because you're in an online class, you have to be sitting down. No. You could learn Spanish standing up, or you can learn voice actually standing up like you should. Yeah, I mean piano is just a lot trickier because position with the piano, but be able to schedule those times to walk around, stretch your legs. Yeah, be able to move a little bit, have some circulation.

Ashley Killam 24:48

Wonderful. And then our final question that we ask all of our podcast guests, we'll see how it works for you and you all have your crazy jobs. But what's on your music standard this week and Are you diversifying your stand? Whether that be physical music stand or metaphorical?

Azalea Laredo 25:05

Oh yes, yes, yes. I'm always diversifying not just the stand, also the skills. When I was, you know, having my Spanish studio, music studio, everything online, I had to certified myself in digital marketing because that just makes sense. And I was able to promote my classes. I was able to get out there and work a little bit of social media. So, you know, always having to learn some stuff. That's definitely part of it. Also, with the school that I'm working now, because we work with so many like underrepresented groups, and just my the program that I'm managing at this point is mostly Hispanic. There's a lot of families, immigrant families, from Mexico. A lot of the parents, if not most of them, speak Spanish. So, we want to be able to teach music, like excellent...provide excellent music education, but maybe using methods that are not standard, typical methods. Also, using music from these other countries, or underrepresented composers or people you know: Latin X, LGBT. We asked, or the school asked, some of the parents - because we have people from Mexico, we have people from Africa, we have people from Asia - to share with us some of the music that they hear or they listen to, or that they grew up with. So we had parents actually record themselves sometimes sharing like a folk song or a lullaby from their countries, and then someone in the team would transcribe that into a score, and sometimes that is an excellent sight-reading exercise for students. So, doing that it's very helpful not only for us that never heard this music before, but also to show it to the students and be like "Here, you could also use these methods or these different resources to learn." That's a little bit of what I'm doing now. Also, hopefully, if everything goes well, and the world doesn't fall apart like it did before, coming to my stand will be an opera that I will hopefully be directing for a team in Austin, UT Austin. it's called Crusader la Cara de la Luna. It's like the first mariachi opera that was commissioned in 2010. So the exciting...it's not just exciting, because it's Mexico and Spanish and it's, you know, my people, right? It's also...the cast is going to be an all Latin X cast. So that is going to be super exciting. I'm very excited. I can't wait to have the score in my hands and look at it. Hopefully, if everything goes well, and the world stays where it is right now, I will be able to direct that with a wonderful team in Austin. I'm just very excited for that one.

Carrie Blosser 28:00

That's fantastic. I cannot wait for the summer and for sending all of the negative COVID vibes so COVID goes away so that you can go do that.

Azalea Laredo 28:08

I know!!

Carrie Blosser 28:10

Well, thank you so much for joining us!

Azalea Laredo 28:13

Of course! Thank you so much for having me. It was so good to share, and thank you so much for listening to my crazy stories and journey.

Carrie Blosser 28:24

Thank you for listening to Diversify the Stand. To support us and our projects, visit our website at diversifythestand.org.

Ashley Killam 28:31

And a huge shout out to Eris DeJarnett who wrote the intro and outro music. The piece that we've been playing is "Bored Games for Two Trumpets and Fixed Media." Links to their website are in the podcast description.

Carrie Blosser 28:42

And as always, we asked our guests what's on your stand?