Are you a free spirit, a rebel? Or maybe you just hate being told what to do?

I have to admit that sometimes one or more of those labels fits me. Most of the time I toe the line but there are moments when I just don’t want to do the thing I know I should do. Now I’m not talking about anything il...

Have you ever had one of those moments when you wonder if you’ve been doing it all wrong? It might be something you have taken for granted, a habit maybe, or a process, something you thought was the perfect system. You always have done it that way, but suddenly you have a moment of doubt. Maybe i...

Johann Sebastian Bach is a name every musician knows. He is revered as a composer whose music defined musical practices in the Baroque era and whose compositions still influence music and musicians today. Learning about his music and learning to play his music is required study for any music majo...

Today’s podcast is all about tempo, and I have to start by saying that tempo is a funny thing. We define it with numbers or with the familiar Italian words, or less familiar French or German ones, and it still seems elusive.

Much of the time we try to pin a piece of music down to a number, a mat...

When I was preparing for this week’s show, I couldn’t help being reminded of a couple of tired old jokes.

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this. 
Doctor: Then don’t do that.

And,

Patient: Doctor, it hurts and I don’t know what’s wrong.
Doctor: Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

Whe...

It’s high time I got up on my soapbox. It’s not often I do a rant on the podcast, but there’s an issue that has me so fired up that I had to talk about it with you.

I believe it’s the result of how we are learning now. There are so many opportunities to learn online, everything from individual l...

This podcast episode goes live on April Fool’s Day, and I probably couldn’t have picked a more appropriate day to release it. I didn’t do it on purpose, but today’s topic lines up very nicely with April Fool's. It’s about the fool’s game of self-criticism.

I think the most dangerous pitfall for ...

We harpists take our finger placement seriously. Getting the right fingers on the right strings at the right time is paramount. One misplaced finger and a whole passage can go wobbly.

One of the quotes of Johann Sebastian Bach that comes to my mind at this moment is this one: “It's easy to play ...

Call me crazy if you want. I know your ideal day might be a day at the spa, or sitting on the beach with a good book, or going for a hike in the mountains. Although those all sound good to me, my ideal day - or at least one of my ideal days - would be a day when I could practice all day. A day wh...

My husband’s family is German, and even before we were married I discovered that one of the things I had long heard about German housewives was true, at least in my mother-in-law’s house: Germans take a clean house seriously. 

By American standards my own house isn’t filthy. I keep it fairly nea...

See if you can guess the answer to this.

What can sometimes feel gently rocking like a boat on a lake on a calm summer’s day, and other times puts a lively spring into your step? It isn’t hard, but it’s never simple. You’ve almost certainly encountered it in your harp music, and even though you ...

I am always interested to hear what first attracted harpists to the harp. It’s fascinating to learn the many ways that the harp can draw a potential student. My own story is that I heard the harp on the radio and told my parents that was what I wanted to do. The important part of this story for m...