How to be a musician and a professor- Heather Pinson

Photo provided by Heather Pinson

"In American culture, it's very important to have [kids] involved in as many different things as possible," Heather Pinson explained on the many activities she was involved in as a kid. Her parents enrolled her in different sports, music and ballet classes. Nevertheless, she quitted many of them out of a lack of interest.
"I was nine when I started playing violin," she went on, also admitted jokingly to being a late starter. "I started reading Sherlock Holmes, and he played the violin. I wanted to be like him so I decided to keep up with it."
she went on to study music in college with an emphasis in performance making the violin an even bigger part of her life.
"I practiced a lot in college," she narrated. "We played music about seven hours a day from orchestra to string quartet to chamber music."
That's when she started experiencing excruciating pain in her left wrist, which led her to see a doctor and realize she had Keinbock's disease, a disorder of the wrist.
"It is a disorder where your bones don't grow the same length, which causes pain when you turn your wrist around to play the violin," Pinson explained. "They had to remove part of the bone to make them the same length."
"I had to take a year off of playing," she said. "I lost my voice. I still went to college, but I couldn't play classical music."
"I still went to orchestra and chamber music, and I just sat there. I couldn't play. That's when I started learning jazz."
... And thus began Pinson's journey in jazz, regaining her voice from this genre of music. Jazz gave her more control over the musical notes, and therefore she could alternate the notes she couldn't play, an exercise impossible in classical music.
"Jazz was to me like a beautiful exotic woman I didn't know anything about," Pinson cleverly illustrated. "I would go to jazz clubs wondering why they are clapping in the middle of the song. That's what you do in jazz. You clap after the soloist plays his or her performance."
"It was so odd and fascinating because it was so different from anything I grew up with, and I learned it in the clubs," she added. "My teacher would be the guy playing the horn in the house band. He would show me a couple of notes here and there every night. They were very patient with me and told me what I was doing wrong."
After graduating college, Pinson moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana  to attend a graduate program in music history in Louisiana State University. One of her teachers who understood her love for jazz, let her join his jazz band.
"He didn't know where the hell to put me because there's no violin [in jazz]," she said between a chuckle.
He let her play the part of the third trumpet on her violin, which gave her freedom to improvise on the notes. She joked about how horrible she was at the beginning, yet her determination led her to other gigs in country, rock and zydeco bands.
Nowadays, Pinson plays in two bands, Antz Marching band, a Dave Matthews cover band and The Fabulous Gunslingers, a country band she joined a month ago.
"I have to learn their music," she said referring to the latter band. She held up three sheets of paper with a long list of songs for me to see.
She is also the interim department head of communication at Robert Morris University and a faculty member.
During the time she is not teaching, administrating or playing music, Pinson volunteers as a board member for the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra. She also works with "poetry reading, the art group and the music group in Pittsburgh."
"It takes a lot of time, but you build up [your network] that way," she confessed.
She does her best to juggle between all of those obligations.
"I can do this with the amount of energy I have right now. The music is my relief from work."
"I think music is important because it enriches one's life," she stated.
She advised aspiring musicians to be flexible and to have a backup plan. For instance, her first years as a musician, Pinson taught violin to support herself.
"In music, you have to be able to teach, compose, perform and play in all venues," she concluded.