If you’ve ever attended a show by the Dear School of Creative and Performing Arts, you may have missed that the pianist takes his shoes off as he plays.

This man is no other than Daniel Ley, the pianist for CAPA.

In Houston, Texas, Ley first began playing piano at age six where his mother enrolled him and his siblings in piano lessons with their neighbor. A couple of years later, he and his family moved to Louisiana, where he continued to take piano lessons.

“The first two or three years it was all forced, then we eventually started getting better at it. That’s when we developed the coordination, and your hands started working and we were able to play simple songs rather than just the exercises and scales,” Ley said. “It became fun to us, and we actually wanted to practice.”

His high school didn’t have a music program, but they did have a theater program. Ley played piano for the school’s productions, as well as for the school choir.

Ley went on to complete a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from Centenary College of Louisiana where he was offered a job while a junior at the university.

He worked as an accompanist for Centenary’s voice lessons, theater productions and church work.

“While I was doing a show in Shreveport, one of our students was coming back from Northwestern to do the show and brought his teacher with him,” Ley said. “He was watching me play and direct music and told me he really liked what I was doing and that I should come back to work at Northwestern with him. So, I said, you know what, that sounds like an interesting change.”

Ley came to Northwestern State University of Louisiana where he was set up with an assistantship while he completed a master’s in piano performance, as well as continuing his job at Centenary.

He currently works as a piano coach for the theater department on campus and accompanist for the school choirs, opera theater, recitals, voice lessons, school productions and juries.

“I get to make music as my job, theater, music, choir, art. I get to work with the students and see their energy, watch them pursue their dreams and help cultivate that,” Ley said. “Like any job, you may have to do things you don’t necessarily want to do so it may not be as easy as most people think but at the end of the day, I get to do what I love.”