Today we’d like to introduce you to Ensley Riley.
Hi Ensley, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve been a professional singer since I was 13 years old. I am originally from Tennessee and I grew up performing on the stages of Nashville. I spent my early adult life working and performing all over the world and in 2002 decided to permanently relocate to the Orlando, FL area. I quickly joined a band and met the bassist, Matt Riley, who was considered one of the top players in the Central Florida area with several successful bands in his past. Fast forward several years, we fell madly in love, and were married in 2009. During this time I began a 15 year career in wellness and early childhood education for large corporations. Although I valued my experience, I knew I wanted to apply everything I have accomplished in my career to teaching music full time. I took the leap and decided to quit my corporate life and began teaching music full time in our home studio in 2015. Having spent over 30 years performing and working in the music industry, I was excited to share my knowledge, passion, and experience to students in private lessons in voice, piano, dance, and musical theater prep. Although Matt has been a loyal employee of UPS for over 39 years, he also began to teach private lessons in bass and drums. However, we had a slight twist on our home environment as we also co own an exotic pet rescue. Home to over 35 pets we offer a hands on experience during special events providing education in reptile and animal care to the community. We have 15 snakes (nothing venomous), several bearded dragons, a leopard gecko, and 13 cats. Would the music students be scared? Would they think we are nuts? Although we love all of our rescues we were worried. However, we quickly realized that our pets were an important part of the process providing our students and their families with so much love, education, and therapy. While our students are developing their skills and gaining confidence in music, they are loved by many pets that provide comfort and joy. Thus we decided to combine our love of music and animal rescue and created “The Riley Music Zoo”. We offer lessons in our home studio, I travel if I can throughout the Winter Garden area, and we teach virtual if needed. We host multiple showcases and fun events each year and our students and their families have become our family! We have students that are professional musicians, many that are actively involved in the musical theatre industry throughout the Central Florida area, and others that simply do it for fun. We have students that are 6 years old and students that are 83 years young!
Although we teach 6 days a week, we still perform from time to time when we can and we try to include our students when appropriate. Our last show we opened for Joel Hoekstra (White Snake, Cher, School of Rock and Rock of Ages on Broadway) and Bradon Gibbs (Poison) for the City of Casselberry. A handful of my students were able to join us on stage to perform the 80’s hit “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. They now believe they are certified rock stars!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It was a scary decision to make when I quit my stable corporate career. Would I be successful? I was starting from scratch, What if I wasn’t good enough? How would I even find students? It was all new to me. All of my insecurities were holding me back. However, it was my husband who encouraged me and gave me the support and confidence to take the leap. He was confident in my abilities and basically became my biggest cheerleader. The rest is history!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
One thing we have learned is that teaching our students goes beyond simply music. We develop a support system for each student and their families as we help them navigate through school life, work life, performing, and the overall ups and downs of life. They support each other as well and we have a blast together as one big music family. The relationships we have developed throughout the years has been a huge blessing. We know that music and animal rescue is a gift. This is our calling and we are happy to sacrifice to help as many souls that we can whether human, fury, and even scaly.
Fun fact! Our rescue kitten Coco went viral on Instagram and just passed 5.6 million views! Her funny video has allowed us to further advocate for animal rescue.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.facebook.com/share/18rHfWaNeW/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ensleyriley?igsh=MTN6OTkzOWNjenp1cQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1WrfHCMyCa/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EnsleyRileyMusic
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/ensleyriley?igsh=MTN6OTkzOWNjenp1cQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
Image Credits
Ensley Riley
Matt Riley
Kelly Mills
