Despite the wet, cold, dreary weather, the graveside service for my Mom couldn't have been warmer or more beautiful. My Dad and I got in...

Wear your Charlie Brown Halloween shirt today, is what my little voice told me this morning as I woke from not the best night's sleep due...

It started out a few years ago as a call to get the morning obituaries, but the truth of the matter is, it was more about getting to talk wi

Imagine that you are a young composer in your early twenties, studying composition with a world- renowned composition teacher, who happens

What is it like to take piano lessons? It is a whole new world! A world filled with a variety of things . . . excitement, adventure, enterta

To tell or not to tell – that was the question I had been asking myself for several weeks. Someone I was concerned about was having some...

In recent months, doctors discovered, through various blood tests, that my father's blood platelets were extremely high. How high, you...

Recently, Dr. Jovanni-Rey de Pedro, Assistant Professor of Piano and Pedagogy at Samford University here in Birmingham, stumbled on to my...

Driving home from work one night recently, Michael Jackson's song, "You Are Not Alone," comes on the radio, and almost on cue, a spider...

I lay awake in bed in the darkness of the night, listening to the sound of the thunderstorm that had just begun. I lay there listening...

“Another bad day,” I thought to myself as I drug my frail body out of bed on a gloomy Sunday morning. I had had nothing but bad days for...

The Christmas song of ALL Christmas songs was never intended to be for the Yuletide season. Jingle Bells, written in 1857 by James Lord...

“I have written a pavane for a dead princess, not a dead pavane for a princess.” Ravel did not mean for this statement about his lovely,...

Do any of you struggle with PRIDE? If you had asked me 20 years ago if I had a problem with pride, I would have said, "No! Of course...

Henry Floyd Freeman was my Great Great Grandfather on my Mother's side. His family was one of the first to settle in Tallapoosa County...

To protect the innocent, I will keep certain details of this little incident discreet. It was a hot summer day as I walked into a very...

Music can be a powerful force. Did you know that the beloved patriotic song, “God Bless America,” was influential enough to unify even...

Working with the public as I do at Ellis Piano, customers come in quite often and tell me all kinds of things about issues they are...

Kristin Kennamer had been an unhappy student in Pharmacy School at Samford University for only a short time when she decided that...

"Practice until you own the music. Practice enough so that when you make a mistake, it sounds like part of the music. You can say, 'Oh,...