What do you do to begin your practice sessions?

I’m certain you have a routine to warm up your fingers and your focus, one that helps you prepare to do your best work and to play beautiful music. You probably have given much thought to this and carefully crafted it to serve you well.

Have you given as much thought to how you finish a practice session? You may not have considered the last...

There’s nothing like “harp” for the holidays. 

That’s not quite how the song goes, but it is certainly true that no instrument seems more suited to Christmas celebrations than the harp. Choirs sing of the ”angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold,” and carolers remind us to “strike the harp, and join the chorus.” ...

Have you ever felt that success - in your music practice or in any other endeavor - was just beyond your reach? That you seemed to be getting closer and closer to your goal and still not actually attaining it?

• Picture a sports game where the teams appear evenly matched until one spectacular play changes the momentum of the game. 
• Or an inventor whose attempts have all failed until an...

It’s perhaps the most common cocktail party question: So, what do you do?

Talking about what we do - our activities, our work, our hobbies - is an easy way to define ourselves. When we tell others what we do, we give them an easy way to understand a little about us. We also give ourselves an identity and the feeling of belonging to a group of others who do the same thing.

Occasionally,...

I am at heart a do-it-yourself-er. Give me a project and I dive right in, sometimes getting in water that’s a little too deep. In fact, a number of my attempted projects have shown clearly that some things are better left to the experts. 

There was my bathroom wallpaper that looked great but never really did stick to the wall. And the sweater I knit that came down to my knees. Over...

There are things you do for your children that you would never have done for yourself. There are icky things, sticky things, difficult things, unusual things. For instance, I am pretty sure my father never would have dreamed about lugging a harp around if I hadn’t needed him to. For my son, I took karate lessons.

I’ve never been much of a sports person and I never would have thought...

Plan now for Christmas? You might be thinking that most of your holiday harp playing was planned long ago, possibly in the middle of the summer. I have always liked to prepare much of my holiday repertoire then too. But that’s just the first step.

What I want to share with you today are my three most powerful strategies for making sure that you don’t lose the ground you gained when...

There are many dividing points in life, moments when you know you have reached a new phase or growth stage. They are the thresholds that you cross, knowing that nothing will be the same afterward. Passing your driver’s test, getting married, having your first baby are some of the huge milestones in life.

For a harpist, one of those milestones, and one that is absolutely essential to their...

Growth hurts.

Whether it’s those painful knees of a growing adolescent, or a lesson learned through a painful mistake, growth is usually the fruit of struggle, perhaps some frustration and occasionally failure.

Thomas Edison didn’t invent one lightbulb. The lightbulb that finally worked was the result of thousands of lightbulbs he invented that didn’t work. The butterfly...

“Don’t rush, dear.” Countless music teachers have said that to even more music students for generations. Keeping a steady tempo while you play can be one of the hardest things to do. But it shouldn’t be.

Consider for a moment that our entire body is rhythmic. Our heart beats in a steady rhythm; we breathe in and out. We have a natural sleep cycle. Even our snoring is...