About Me

Born and raised in Houston, I started piano lessons when I was seven years old, and I studied the piano for 12 years. I also sang and played guitar in choirs and folk groups through middle school and high school.

Two events happened during those years of piano lessons that eventually led me to the harp.

When I was 12, my family went on a three-week tour of Europe, and during that stay, our tour group went for afternoon high tea at London’s famed department store, Harrod’s. We got to explore the store, and my sister and I gravitated to the music department where I immediately fell completely in love with a small pedal harp that was on display! My parents had to peel me off that harp when it was time to leave.

Then, during my junior year in high school, our choir performed Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. They hired in musicians from the Houston Symphony to accompany us, and Beatrice Schroeder-Rose was set up about eight feet in front of me. I was mesmerized watching her play that harp.

The rest is history. I told my Dad that really wanted to learn how to play the harp, so we asked around and found a teacher and got started.

My first teacher was Mildred Milligan, and she was already well into her nineties when I started taking lessons with her. Within a year, I was playing pedal harp.  In the meantime, the orchestra director at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas offered me a scholarship to come to SFASU and be the first harpist ever at the school. By the time I left for school, Mil had stopped teaching, so I moved on to studying with Cynthia Cooper. I was about to play in a symphony orchestra when I’d only been playing the harp for 1-1/2 years!  I really miss playing in an orchestra.

After graduating from SFASU with a BFA in Music, I moved back to Houston and soon became the featured harpist at a lovely Houston restaurant called The Brownstone and then at the Westin Oaks Hotel for their Sunday brunch. I played at the Brownstone for about three years and at the Westin Oaks for about 1-1/2 years while also trying to build up my private gigs business.

Beginning in 1985, becoming a single mom, graduate school, and a back injury took me away from the harp for a few years. We moved to Colorado for a while, and after moving back to Texas in 1994, I still was not playing and had my pedal harp rented out for five years. I finally decided to sell that harp in November of 2000.

The same day that I sold my pedal harp, I turned around and bought my Triplett Eclipse at Melody’s Traditional Music and Harp Shoppe here in Houston. From that point on, I have loved playing lever harps and have had lever harps of three different sizes.

I now have two–the Eclipse (38 strings) and a Stanley & Stanley Florence (26 strings).

I also got interested in cross-strung harp after hearing a CD by Harper Tasche, so I decided to try that, too! I just sold my little Stoney End Esabelle cross-strung harp, but I still have my beautiful cross-strung harp built by Emil Geering of Canada (now deceased).

I was finally able to buy another pedal harp last year.  I got a Venus Penti Chamber model, a 44-string harp, and it is everything I could have hoped it would be.