I liked the Greek Guys. If you were one of the fifty billion people tuning into the Eurovision Song Contest, you know what I’m talking about. The Greek Guys wore tight white jump ......

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On October 20 I  had the great pleasure of performing for the AWC Duesseldorf. It was an early (for me) show—10:00 AM—but all of us were awake enough to have a good time. Here i......

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The fish aren't jumpin' but the weather is high. It's hot here in Cologne Germany, but not nearly as hot as it is in Sicily, where my daughter is vacationing with her pal Ramona and Ramona's family......

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 oth......

Life from the Other Side of the Steinway

It’s not always a Steinway. Sometimes it’s an ugly-looking, beautiful-sounding white Bösendorfer concert grand or a Yamaha c......

Joe Bendel and Kathy Parsons filed beautiful reviews of my book RHYTHM this month. Both of them share my love for music, so it doesn't surprise me that they "got" the message of the book.......

Happy New Year to all of you. Let's hope 2009 will be the year we begin to see real change in the way we treat the world. I'm still reeling from yesterday's inaugural hul-dula. What a great day for......

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   Pittsburgh pianist William Chrystal died on Friday, August 29th. He was my teacher.
    When I turned nine years old, my mother started driving me to Mr. Chrysta......

I met Henry Steinway in 2005, shortly after my book was published. Betsy Hirsch (Steinway salesperson extraordinaire) had given him a copy of Piano Girl. As fate would have it, he was in his......

The evening calls to me. I’ve put on my best black dress, spent twenty minutes on make-up, and blown every crinkle out of my longish hair. Jewelry or not? Not. It......

"I would like to paint the way a bird sings."
Claude Monet

MAGNOLIA

A light wind gusts through the bank of magnolia trees on the edge of the castle park, and the ripened blossoms, pale pink and white, swell with the weight of the breeze. Two childr......

For someone who doesn't much care for contests, I seem to be involved in a lot of them lately. After a suggestion from industry professional Kevin Becketti, a lot of nudging from my loving and enth......

There's something about the New York City Marathon that makes me cry. I've always been emotionally susceptible to pageants and awkward displays of pride and strength—a high school marching ba......

Songs from the Castle has been pre-nominated for the 50th Annual Grammy Awards. This first round of voting by NARAS members will determine the five finalists. If we manage to make that lis......

A perfect summer in Manhattan slipped past me so quickly that my head is still spinning from all the fun. But now I’m back in Germany, back on Mom-patrol, back on the piano bench at the castl......

I’m sad about James Brown. I’m even sadder that I couldn’t go to the funeral, which, according to my friend Carol Delgado, was the uptown event of the decade. Carol bought a new h......

Usually I don’t much care for February. The clouds are the color of a cement driveway and the wind hums an endless dirge of doom and gloom. It seems like spring will never arrive.

It has been a month of strange gigs, not just for me, but for everyone I know. Intrepid Piano Girl Emilee Floor played a Salt Lake City job that involved accompanying a German speed dating contest.......

Every April asparagus season begins in Germany. This event—trumpeted by the shouts of delight usually reserved for firework displays on the Rhine—marks the arrival of a two month nation......

We're still settling down after a whirlwind tour of the USA this past summer. My husband, two children, and I traveled to New York City at the end of June, where I performed a reading and concert i......

For those of you who listened to my NPR Piano Jazz show this past week, thank you for your comments and letters! I recorded the show back on May 18, at Manhattan Beach Studios in New York City.