I just returned from Vilnius, Lithuania, where I performed for a conference of 250 American women, the American Ambassador to Lithuania, the Lithuanian Undersecretary of State, and a handful of other Lithuanian dignitaries. Before I began my program, I was asked to play the Lithuanian National Anthem. Google it, it's not a bad tune. My husband helped me harmonize it with some hip chord changes, which I was afraid might cause an international incident, but he stayed within acceptable boundaries, and no one seemed too pissed off that I had turned their anthem into something that sounded suspiciously like a Cole Porter ballad. I'm told that the Lithuanian members of the audience had tears in their eyes as I played, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, you never know. I'm sure it was the world's first cocktail piano rendition of their song.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, please stand for the Lithuanian National Anthem." Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd be saying.

There was no water in my minibar fridge in the hotel room, but there were about 34 tiny bottles of vodka.

The night before the concert I was invited to a traditional Lithuanian dinner (think root vegetables). After dinner, a local music group played. The group featured a couple of pretty women with hair coiled in braids on top of their heads, an older gentleman who stomped around and played an alp-horn looking thing, and an assortment of strapping young men who forced us to pound on the tables and yell hoopa shoopa shoy yoy yoy.

A veil of gray covers the city of Vilnius. Between the Russians and the Germans, Lithuania has had a pretty bad century. The people there seem proud and forward-thinking, but still a bit depressed. Could be the time of year. It rained sideways—steel-colored ice-rain that gets under your collar and permeates your socks. I had to sit on my hands all afternoon to make sure my fingers would thaw in time for the concert.

I'm glad to be home.

I did an interview with New Age piano gal-about-town Kathy Parsons before I left town. It has just been posted on her wonderful site, MainlyPiano.com Check it out. Hoopa Shoopa!