Vandalia River

Only minutes after getting tucked in, a child in this house is usually completely lost to the dense interior of the Land of Nod. 

One time, after saying good night, I left her to her sleep and was cheered to…

Eight years ago this month, an ambulance transported my son to the Johns Hopkins pediatric ICU. A profound disorder had compromised his ability to cough, and the common cold was making it too hard to breathe. Day after day the…

A busy summer blended into the fullest fall of my life. The summer music program climaxed while my family was carting all our belongings to a new house and cleaning up the old one. As soon as that was done…

This summer was more about recreating old music than creating new music, and for very good reason. 

Many piano students are victims of the silo effect. The student takes solo lessons, practices in a corner, learns music that he doesn’t…

My mom placed a bunch of white lilac blossoms in my hands, and I flew back in time. 

May 2008. I was an ignorant and anti-cosmopolitan bride whose wedding plans were never going to be featured in The Knot. 

One…

“This illness does not lead to death,” Jesus said, and I smiled at the poor cynics who would find this line irresistible. 

Dear cynic, you quote the Scripture as proof against itself. God said thus, and thus didn’t happen. “This…

Pleased to tell you that a new solo piano piece is out where you can hear it!

Click here to get it on your preferred service.

My husband turned to me one winter evening and said, “Have you ever thought…

“How did you get started in music?”

I once read a variety of answers to this question and was struck by a common theme. Just about everyone mentioned one person in particular. There was one person in their lives, outside…

I was walking into a Christian bookstore as my friend was walking out. She was clutching a new purchase and smiling big. 

“I got Carman’s new release!” she said. 

We were teenagers, and though I didn’t say it, I thought…

Several popular playlists have a piano solo which, if I had written it, I would have dismissed as too easy. It uses simple chord progressions and could probably be played with one hand. 

“But it’s good,” my husband said. He…

“It almost makes you want to go to war.” 

Such was the effect of the fife and drum corps at colonial Williamsburg as they marched by.

Music in wartime is an ancient tradition. Why? Why should something so beautiful, lively…

“Gus never talked about art and hated art theory.” 

Gus himself, however, was an artist. He was Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of the best sculptors of the nineteenth century per historian David McCullough. Apparently, Gus didn’t need to talk about art…