Meet Cindy & Robert Leger

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cindy & Robert Leger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cindy & Robert , looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

Cindy credits her Grandma Putman, who always had projects for her to do: spring cleaning or mowing the yard, followed by the reward of going shopping at a nearby mall. Robert gives credit to his parents. His mother helped build the local community theater, and in doing so landed a gig as a local radio talk show host. His father, with two others, bought out his employer’s struggling business and built it into a firm that won national awards. Both demonstrated the payoffs of hard work.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

We perform as Duo Ocotillo. We both started playing music in our youth. Cindy picked up the cello in elementary school. Robert learned guitar in his teens and added the mandolin in his early 20s. We brought these instruments into our marriage. There’s no other reason anyone would intentionally match a cello and mandolin. That’s probably why we’re the only duo in the Southwest offering what we do. We enhance this unique combination of instruments with our own arrangements of classical, Great American Songbook, stage and screen, folk and pop music from the 1950s to today. Sprinkle in a few original songs, and you have Duo Ocotillo.

Over the past 15 years, we’ve played countless weddings and corporate events, celebrations of life, and intimate concerts in Valley libraries and at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts black box theater. We particularly enjoyed playing for the Burton Barr Library’s summer solstice event the past three years. Between 500 and 1,000 people attend, and it’s fun to have kids sit and watch us play while they wait for the noon sun to do its thing. This year, some patrons left tips for us – and we hadn’t put out a tip jar!

Our most recent piece of music was written to toast our eldest son’s wedding. We called it “Happy Beginnings.”

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The obvious answer is learning to play our instruments and developing our unique talents on each. Both of us can play melody or accompaniment, which gives our performances a great deal of variety. The instruments engage in conversations. For anyone picking up an instrument for the first time, know that every professional musician once sounded as bad as you do. Persevere! You’ll get better, and as you do you’ll get great enjoyment from the music you make, especially if you make it with people special to you.

Being open to new experiences has been important, too. Starting a small business 15 years ago was new to us, and we made a lot of mistakes. We learned from them and got better each year. Being open to new experiences also meant being open to new music. It would have been easy to play only classical music, which we both love. But not all couples want that. Many of the songs we play regularly were first requested by a couple. We’d never heard of Zedd before a bride asked for “Clarity,” and we didn’t know the video game Stardew Valley before a couple asked for “Night Market,” to name just two examples.

A third quality would be curiosity. What would it be like to record an album? We found out in 2017, and produced “Enchantment,” with 10 songs including 3½ originals. What would it be like to go on tour? We’ve done two now. What would it be like to play for couples younger than our children? We learned it helps to keep us young.

So what’s our advice? Find your passion, persevere, and have fun.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

Cindy, always the practical one, cites the Feulliard Cello Method Book and teachers like Sam Minasian and Walter Hawkey. As she points out, you need a good, solid foundation before you can soar to new heights. She’s the Taurus in our marriage, solid and grounded. Robert is the Gemini, boundlessly curious and zipping from one thing to another. This led him to a career in journalism that oddly is also important to Duo Ocotillo. This drive to learn helped him develop skills essential to the business side of things: creating websites, hopping into social media, marketing, networking and making connections.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Brian Foley, Robert Dixon

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