Ocotillo is Cindy and Robert Leger

 

Music has been part of our 30-plus years of marriage. We brought an unlikely pairing of instruments into our joined household, which some of our friends found to be a fitting metaphor. Maybe music is what has kept us together through the decades.

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We started out playing just a few pieces together for the occasional wedding of a friend or relative, as well as funerals for Cindy's father and Robert's aunt. We played in church together while raising a family. After the boys graduated from high school and we found all kinds of free time on our hands, we started Ocotillo.

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Because we have found so much joy in our music, we enjoy  sharing it with couples beginning their lifetime of happiness together.

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We also get great pleasure playing for house concerts where we can interact with an audience, essentially making music together. And there's always something special that happens at corporate events, charitable groups' fund-raising receptions and any celebration enhanced by unique, live music. Music stirs the soul, for the performer as well as the listener.

 

How did music begin for us? Cindy started in middle school and has played cello for more than thee decades in symphony orchestras, chamber groups and string quartets. She is a member of MusicaNova Orchestra and the Arizona Philharmonic. Cindy teaches cello and violin to students in the Northeast Valley.

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Cindy plays a Peter Staszel cello, built at the William Harris Lee Violin shop in Chicago. She uses a Brazilian pernambuco bow.

 

Robert is a longtime church musician on mandolin and guitar. He composes Ocotillo's original pieces, with ample suggestions from Cindy.

 

Robert plays an Old Wave mandolin, custom made in New Mexico of mesquite, redwood, ironwood, Arizona sycamore and turquoise inlay, a California-made Cervantes Milenia PE guitar with spruce top and palo escrito body, and a Spanish-made Juan Alvarez guitar with a cedar top.