Month: January 2017

You never know where you might find a harpist…. in the Phoenix Auto Center waiting area??? Well, why not? I had my hospice harp with me as I was heading to a patient next after getting my car fixed up… and, when speaking to wonderful Katrina, she mentioned she was always dealing with stress and wished I could stay and play for her all day…. I volunteered that I could play while waiting, and she was into it, so I set up and provided some soothing music for all there. I do believe it was appreciated! 🙂

Live harp music has a quality that’s been clinically studied (tho’ more is needed) and shown to reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure, and bring calm to all sorts of settings… even auto centers!

Thank God for all the few thousand gigs I played on Maui! I built a solid repertoire of memorized music, much of which is universally appealing. I have truly been blessed by how opportunities in my life have built on one another, even when least expected.

Martin Luther King and I share the same birth day… I don’t mean the day we celebrate his birthday, but the actual birth date of January 15. Only more recently have I come to appreciate what an amazing man he was… for those of you of a more metaphysical bent, from pretty reliable sources I’ve understood him to be an initiate, which gives even more emphasis to the gifts he gave. While I’m not completely in agreement with all of his philosophies nor all of his practices, I respect his depth of thought, his vast attempts to advance civil rights through non-violent resistance, his holding close to his Christian beliefs.

When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.
~Martin Luther King Jr. ~

Yesterday I had a mini-concert to present for an Assisted Living group, for whom I perform monthly. I decided to dedicate my music to ML King by finding all the harp arrangements I could of spirituals, a couple of gospel hymns, and some excerpts from Roger Miller’s musical, Big River.

Roger Miller you ask? Really? The guy who wrote “King of the Road” wrote the lyrics and music for an on- and off-Broadway musical? Yup, and a really good one at that, garnering many Tony awards including for Best Score. 🙂

The program was a lot of fun to present – on my white DeLight lever harp – and felt to be a success, since most people didn’t know the history of the many tunes I presented, nor in particular did they know Big River.

Continue reading Happy Birthday, ML King