I also think a person becomes a musician when they consider themselves to be a musician. It has many meanings, sometimes even for one individual.

I sang and played instruments almost all my life and I don't know whether I ever asked myself if I "was a musician." As Bill says, I know I would keep singing (and, to some extent, playing), whether or not anyone would ever hear. But now there is a difference. It was gradual over the last 10 years and I owe a lot to Jerry Epstein and Lisa Null for their vocal coaching, but there was a big change after Augusta Vocal Week in 2003.

What happened? Let me back up for a minute and tell about the time Greg Stephens picked up my MacArthur Harp and tried it for the first time. I could not believe the lovely tones he produced from that little harp. It was crystal clear to me that Greg was a musician. He was relating to that stringed instrument in a way I never even understood existed. He was finding many different thing that it was capable of, whereas I had just played it.

During Vocal Week, I had classes all week with Sheila Kaye Adams, and Danny Spooner and for me they both had something, it was a kind of wholeness between them and the music for want of a better way to describe it. Luckily I had brought a MD recorder and could re-hear all that music; I became very, very aware of how much I had missed when I was hearing it live. But what I did know, was that both Sheila Kaye and Danny have a presence when they make music that I respond to very much. I don't mean personality; I mean they are present with the music; somehow they are inside, touching and touched by the music and it just reaches me.

Maybe it was something Sheila Kaye said: "You have to listen with your heart! Don't listen with your head, listen with your heart." It did feel different. Anyway, music took on new depth for me and since then has been more important and more enjoyable than ever before.

And I make better music, too. I can hear, and use my voice in many more ways now and can produce better sounds from the zither and MacArthur harp. The thing is that I relate to each song differently, there's more happening between me and the song. I wasn't really hearing before and I certainly didn't know how to play with/dance with a song the way I do now. It's like doors opened in my head and i'm glad they're not still closed. So I do "feel like a musician" and it's pretty rewarding.

Good question, Peter.

Rita