Keenan Fletcher didn’t know what she was going to do in the Texas Hill Country when she and her husband, Toby, decided to move from Dallas to Llano. “In Dallas, I had my own studio; I was in the pit orchestra for a ballet company and my best friend lived close by. In Llano, there was no ballet, and no symphony; I thought I would have to quit playing the violin and take up gardening.” Fortunately for Keenan (and for the Hill Country), it didn’t come to that. Keenan’s musical talents have been put to good use here, and have brightened the lives of many.

Keenan’s ability was apparent at a very early age, when she began to play the piano by ear. She started taking piano lessons at age six, then violin lessons at age nine. “I connected with violin,” she recalls. “It just clicked; I always loved it.”

But music was not her first career choice. “I was going to train whales,” she says. With that goal in mind, she took classes in marine biology; unfortunately, they didn’t go very well. She didn’t know it at the time, but she had been born with a learning disability now known as “optical motor dysfunction,” which made school very difficult for her. “I had to work very hard,” she remembers. “It was a miracle that I ever graduated from high school. But music was easy.”

Actually reading music was a different story; Keenan “faked it” at first, and was able to get her first professional gig by playing Handel’s Messiah by ear at an audition. But not reading music was a handicap; her college teachers thought at first that she was just being lazy, but eventually she was able to learn. “I think the obstacles that I faced have made me a more effective teacher,” she says. “I think outside the box. Everyone learns a little differently.”

Keenan eventually attended five colleges, practicing on the violin, piano or guitar sometimes as much as ten hours a day. Her third college was Southwest Texas State Uni ...

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