Artist returns to her roots

Blooming Prairie native Elisa “Lisi” Wright has always had a love for music and started to pursue it at the young age of five when she began taking violin lessons with Marlyn Shroeder. 
“My mom loved to sing. She always had music in the house and the car and we would always sing together. I always had music around and it just was a part of my life,” Wright said. “When I was really little I started to play the Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in the car and I always loved it. One day she asked me ‘Do you want to play one of those instruments?’ and I said yeah.” 
Wright continued to take lessons with Shroeder until the fifth grade when she had to move away and after a year of transition she started taking lessons with Sue Radloff of Austin, who continued to be her teacher throughout high school and in the summers when she would come back from college. 
“Those two humans were incredibly important in my life as far as music is concerned. I was very fortunate to find private instructors that I connected with because it is so important to be able to find that,” she said. 
Growing up since Blooming Prairie didn’t have an orchestra she decided to stay involved with music through the band where she played the trumpet and French horn. 
During her junior and senior year of high school she was given the opportunity to not only play in the Austin High School Orchestra, but also be a part of the All State Orchestra. 
“I made the decision that instead of taking calculus I would go over there for orchestra and it was really cool that both schools made it work. Blooming was very supportive of me in that way,” she said. 
Wright began teaching her first student in high school and had no idea that one day she would have 43 students, although currently she has cut back to three. 
“It is really rewarding work. It is really fun to be able to have that skill to teach,” she said. 
After high school, Wright pursued Violin Performance at Macalester College for a year, Rochester Community and Technical College for a semester and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities for a semester. After that she decided to go off on her own and played various gigs. She estimates she has played for 15 to 20 different bands in her lifetime. 
“Music has always been incredibly important to me in my life and an important part of who I am. I connect music to every part of my life. I think back to memories and there is always a song that is associated with it,” she said. “It has just always helped me through different parts of my life whether it was really difficult times or happy times and I have always turned to it.” 
In between all the gigs and the private lessons, Wright founded the music booking agency New Folk Booking to help her husband John’s band Lehto & Wright with their bookings and it grew from there. Today she has around 15 artists and bands. 
Wright now does the vocals and plays violin in a band with John called the Galactic Cowboy Orchestra. 
“It was my husband’s baby. He was just really wanting to play technically challenging music so he started jamming with our guitar player and our former drummer and they wanted a fourth member of the band and I wiggled my way in,” Wright said. “I was really into what they were doing. It was very unique music, stuff that I hadn’t ever really heard before.” 
The band has been around for 5.5 years and considers themselves “jazz grass art- rock”. They are currently working on their fourth original album and have toured all over. This year they have around 60 gigs. 
“It is a really freeing experience for me. Coming from the classical background improvisation was a tricky thing to try for me because I am so used to just reading music of the page as it is and just interpreting it,” she said. “I just love having the freedom to just play what I am hearing and try it out. Being in an environment with guys who love it just as much as me and I don’t feel any sort of judgment at all.” 
Throughout it all, she says the most challenging aspect of being a full-time musician, as with many professions, is the money. 
The Galactic Cowboy Orchestra will be performing with the Austin Symphony Orchestra at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 22, at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.