ARTICLE FEATURED IN WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL

Over the past 9 -10 years, I've had a fabulous time working with my daughter Holly! "Gigging" on the road together has proven to be a rewarding, often intense experience full of interesting twists and turns, ups and downs. And despite a few bumps along the way, we have consistently traveled on a very high plateau. We have grown immensely as a duo with Holly maturing from a pitch-perfect munchkin to a versatile young female vocalist. As musical contemporaries, we continue to learn about our craft and one another. My musical partner in Heartwood, Katie Waldren says: "The members of a performing ensemble are like an extended family, not just because they share some of the worst and best moments together, but because music has a mystical ability to create special bonds between people, affecting us on levels that are uncharted, and occasionally leaving us more emotionally vulnerable." When members of a duo are already "family" to start with, this bond is immeasurable!

Holly and I are very similar when it comes to music and performing. Could this be due to "ancestral memories"? We "feel" music similarly, weaving together arrangements almost effortlessly. Since the age of two, Holly has had the ability to improvise her harmonies around a melody. And while Holly and I share superb verbal communication, we often communicate without words. In performance this can prove very helpful allowing us to tailor our delivery to our specific audience, and spontaneously change our musical interpretations giving our performances a true sense of playfulness. This ability has been gleaned from our years of experience together and also from the work we've done with other talented performers, in particular, Ken Lonnquist, a master performer /singer/ songwriter and "mentor" to Holly.

As mom and daughter and as musical partners, we play quite the dichotomous roles. I am "mom" to Holly as well as her older sister, Tiffany, a highly respected U.W. Madison student, who has dreams of becoming a medical doctor and who is not particularly interested in artistic performance. While Holly and I share a very respectful, trusting professional partnership, when it comes to the day-to-day mother /daughter roles, we are fairly typical. Sometimes it's very difficult to shift from the parental to professional role and back again. I am easily frustrated and cranky when I sense peer pressure creeping into her psyche, or when I find she is overly immersed in conspicuous consumption of stuff! Holly gets upset with me when she feels I'm overly restrictive or too intrusive into her private social life. What can I say, Holly just turned 16! With 35+ years between us, we certainly are not like the Judds who bridge only a mere 16 year generation gap! But in spite of our considerable gap, we are the best of friends.

Obviously, I am very proud of Holly's breadth of talent and her artistic accomplishments: She shares a very special stage presence that her opera singing great grandmother possessed allowing both to establish a magical connection with an audience; Holly recently received a grant to transcribe and compile her original piano compositions into a book with her piano mentor Jan Mangin; Holly is a gifted visual artist, a talented gymnast/dancer and an excellent student. Her long-term goals include performance in both theatre and musical venues. I hope she will find opportunities and outlets along these lines, although presently, our performance schedule and rural location limits her involvement in the Madison theatre scene. Holly has so much creativity constantly brewing and flowing out of her that I just hope she will always find enough time to pursue her dreams and feel satisfaction as her work comes to fruition. I also hope she realizes that it's often it's the path to one's dream and that provides so much of the joy.