As a child, Liz Taylor-McMullen needed to learn at least two instruments.
It was a requirement her parents had for their five children, of which Liz was the youngest. “I really look up to all of my older siblings,” Liz said. “Every single one of them has something amazing or cool about them, whether they are great musicians or very talented visual artists.”
Along with piano, two brothers played trumpets while her other two siblings played clarinet. “Of the two brothers that played trumpet, one of them in particular was very good, and I just wanted so much to be good like him, so I picked trumpet whenever I started in sixth grade,” Liz explained.
Then at the end of her seventh year, her band director in Texas talked to her about her choice. “He pulled me aside and he said, ‘Look, I know you can play piano. I can tell that you’ve got music talent, that the skill’s there, but you’re just not set up to be as successful as you want at trumpet,’” she said. “And he was right. My lips are a little bit bigger than the average trumpet player’s. It doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, but it does mean that I’m going to have more struggles. I’m just not naturally set up for it. And also I have an overbite. Trumpet players tend to be very flat, from the tip of their nose to the bottom of their chin.”
After what she called a gentle conversation, he handed her a euphonium, which is similar to the baritone or a half-sized tuba. “He said, ‘I want you to take this home,’” she said. “‘And I want you to try it out. And see if you like it. If you don’t, we’ll never talk about it again. But if you do like it, I really would like you to consider switching. I think you could be really successful at this.’ And I did take it home, and all of a sudden, every issue that I ever had with trumpet was instantly fixed.”
His technique in speaking with her about her limitations made an impact as well. “I think that also set the stage for how I wanted to be as a teacher myself later in life,” Liz added. “That guy was able to have a difficult conversation with me in the nicest way possible and I left that conversation not feeling hurt, but actually hopeful. So I tried to remember that feeling and channeled it whenever I was talking to students when I was band director.”
She earned her bachelor’s in music education and a master’s in music performance before working for two years as a band director. She’d had to learn quite a few different instruments to teach band. “I was studying to be a band director, and when you do that, you learn how to play all of the band instruments to a certain level of proficiency, because you had to be able to get sixth graders started.”
As the band director, a lot of people in a state like Arkansas are often the only music director for an entire school district at times and can be responsible for up to sixty students. “You have to be able to wear a lot of hats,” Liz said. “That’s why I can play a lot of instruments. Because I learned how to learn.”
She spent four years more as a choir director before moving into administration at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). “I think I just always knew that I wanted to be a music teacher from the time I was a little girl,” Liz shared. “It just seemed like the natural thing to do. It never really crossed my mind to have another job. And I got the job and I did the job. And once I got to the point where I felt comfortable and knew what I was doing … It was three things. It was the red tape, it was dealing with parents who didn’t appreciate what I was doing and couldn’t see that I was trying really hard, and just feeling like I wasn’t making much of a difference. It wore me down.”
Now she works part-time as a musician, playing accordion in the Lieder Vox Duo with Vidal Verástegui Ruiz, tenor banjo in a traditional jazz band at UCA, and euphonium with Little Rock Winds, a French jazz combo. She learned accordion later in life, when her parents found one for sale and knew she’d like it. “I feel in love with it,” Liz said. “It was so versatile and was such a niche thing that hadn’t been used a whole lot in our area. It got people’s attention because it was a sound they hadn’t heard much before. I’m just really glad I’ve taken this different track because I’m enjoying it more.”
She’ll be playing the accordion with Vidal this weekend at WunderHaus, finally able to perform (with social distancing). The naming of Lieder Vox Duo came with a few layers. She and Vidal are both cat crazy, and he first recommended “the litter box duo.” They pulled the German word for song, Lieder, and the Latin word for Voice, Vox, to come up with Song and Voice Duo with a subtle nod to their love for cats.
And her work with UCA, before the pandemic, allows her to leave her post for once class a week, which she used for her traditional jazz band practice. When she’s able, she also teaches 20 hours of music every week, usually piano. Every once in a while she gets a request for guitar or banjo. “Piano is my first instrument from when I was a kid, and so I live there a lot,” Liz explained. “It’s very popular and a great way to make money on the side.”
When she left her work in the school system, she found happiness in performing community music, which is not usually a focus in education. “I think that’s a huge part of the equation that’s missing,” she shared. “One of the things that I learned late, late late in life, probably when I was 32–I’m 37 now–is how rewarding and fun it is to play in a small group that goes and gigs at festivals. Just plays for fun at the farmer’s market. It’s so much fun. I’m playing music that I enjoy and that people around me enjoy. It can be academic on the other path. Academic in a way that only you and other academic people can enjoy. I want to reach a bigger, broader audience. I came across more kids when I was playing at festivals and just reaching more people. Making more people smile. That was why I shifted the kind of music I tend to perform.”
She’s able to do more music making, leaving the administrative work to her day job. She’s also found a host of benefits in performing community music, which includes introducing new music to others, finding closeness in collaboration with others, and discovering her artistic spark again. She’s also able to make mistakes and learn new things constantly. “I just want to be better at it,” Liz shared. “At all times, I’m always thinking, how can I adjust my skills? How can I approach this with a different kind of tactic? I just want to keep learning. That’s the driving force behind all of this. I just love to learn. I want to meet people, have a good time with my friends while I do it, and I want to keep learning.”
She’s able to enjoy everything she does. “And they all make me really happy,” Liz explained. “And that’s so important because I wasn’t happy before. And I thought those things initially would make me happy and they didn’t. It has been a long road of figuring out exactly what I wanted out of music and I think I’m finally there.”
The pandemic stopped rehearsals and performances back in March. But she’s also found positives despite all of the changes. “One of the things I discovered a couple of years ago is that I really enjoy arranging music,” Liz said. “It means that I take pre-existing music, like a popular song, and I rewrite it for the groups that I play in. …. How do you rewrite it for two people? It’s a challenge but it makes my brain happy.”
She encourages others to give music a chance. “If you’ve ever thought about doing music in any capacity, lessons, trying something new, do it,” Liz said. “Even if you can’t fully commit to it, do it.”
And she would like to see a celebration of life on the other side of the pandemic. “I hope we come out with another renaissance,” Liz explained. “Just like how we had the plague at the end of the medieval period, and the renaissance was the celebration of life for all of the survivors, I hope that’s what we have, too, and it seems indicative that’s already happening. We’ve got people with lots of time on their hands. I think we’re just going to have a big explosion of really developed, put-together culture when all of this over.”
Find Liz on YouTube (link to come) and the Lider Vox Duo on Facebook. They’ll be at WunderHaus this weekend and will announce any further performance dates on their Facebook page. Season three of Sustaining Craft explores how those with creative businesses have been impacted by the world-wide pandemic hitting the United States. Find Sustaining Craft on Instagram and Facebook.