There is a great article in Harp Column magazine this month by Nadia Pessoa. It’s all about survival skills and being prepared for musical emergencies. Not dealing with a broken string, but being prepared to play when you weren’t expecting it.

In the article, Erin Earl Wood mentions her teacher telling her to always have 20 minutes of music memorized, just in case. That’s...

It happens. We keep careful records and live by our calendars. But sometimes circumstances change, and we have to cancel performances we committed to. What is the best professional etiquette for those sticky situations?

There are two kinds of situations that require slightly different handling.

First is the emergency situation. It is last minute (the day of the performance or the day before)...

Your freelance music business will thrive if you can count on repeat business. If you think you can’t get repeat business, let me show you how.

Suppose you play weddings. These people will only get married once, at least to each other. I’m not suggesting that you hinge your business on a future divorce, but there are likely other celebrations where your music would be ideal. How...

There’s really only one secret to performing. Do it a lot. You get better at it. That being said, there are skills you can actually develop that will make it easier.

Too often, students are thrown into difficult performance situations without really being prepared for them. If things go well, everyone’s happy. If things go badly, the damage can be difficult to repair. I think...

We often talk about what freelance musicians need to DO: make phone calls, send out contracts, talk to clients or potential employers, keep a music stand in the car. But the long list of tasks seems less daunting when you distill it and realize that there are habits and attitudes that you need to develop to be successful in the freelance market. It doesn’t matter whether you’re...

What is the spirit of an professional musician? And do you have to be one to have one?

The usual definition of a professional musician is a person who gets paid for playing music. Simple, and true enough, as far as it goes. But most professional musicians would define it much more broadly.

Professional musicians know it’s not just about the money, although that’s certainly part of...

If you are one of those busy harpists who played everywhere during the holiday season, you may seriously need a break. Slow down if you need to, but don’t stop. This is the time to create momentum to keep your business thriving and those phone calls and emails coming.

Momentum is a funny thing. It is motion and direction. It seems elusive, but it is easy to create. All you have to do is...

                                                   The pursuit of mastery bears gifts.
                                                 ...

The concert is over. I pack up the harp, drive home and anticipate the first question I will hear as I come through the door: “So how was the concert?”

My husband never wants to hear about the difficulty of trying to neatly thread the ensemble needle between the flutes and the celli, or what the intonation challenges were. He wants an answer that’s more along the lines of...

“Compared to what?”

“It’s not good enough,” I say when my practicing isn’t going well. “It’s not ready yet,” says a student when the recital date is getting close.

What I find interesting about these statements is that they feel like statements of fact, but they are not. They are judgment statements. And although we may feel certain about...