Hannah Harris

Hi Reader! There's something about the name "Liz" that immediately has me thinking "incredible fiddler and amazingly warm and kind person." (Liz Carroll, Liz Knowles, Liz Doherty, Liz Hanley, Liz Kane, Liz Faiella... the list goes on!) Today I want to chat about something that Liz Knowles said a year or two ago in a podcast interview that has stood out to me to this day. "Isn't it interesting how we all come to trad music differently and learn tunes in different orders!" I'm paraphrasing...

Hi Reader! There are some weeks where I sit down to write these letters to you, and I know exactly what I'm going to chat about. Then there are other weeks where I have a bunch of different ideas spinning through my head (and still others where it's all a blank 😅). This is one of those "busy spinning brain" weeks. Do I tell you about how a student and I tweaked one bowing pattern to totally change the character of a tune? Or the bonus video training I recorded on wrist flexibility for the...

Hi Reader! I had this bright idea last week that I'd wait to just write you a Sunday letter the morning of, fresh off of our set at Michigan Irish Music Fest so that I could share the excitement and recap in the moment... Only to forget that the morning after staying up until the wee hours of the morning playing tunes is not the best time to try and get the brain into a writing state! 😆 So no new letter from last week, but I am still very much enjoying thinking back on the weekend, and all...

Hi Reader! So I've been living in metro Detroit for a little over a year now, and it's been one of the best decisions I ever made for my well being. One factor in particular that motivated the move was the expanded opportunity to put myself in sessions where I don't know all the tunes played. I've heard various versions of the advice "put yourself in rooms where you can learn" before -- and maybe you have too! But it can be helpful to put concrete examples to that advice. Just the other night...

Hi Reader! This past week felt like a string of behind the scenes steps for me and my partner -- you know, the less flashy "wins" and more of the necessary action steps needed to get to your actual goal. But they were wins all the same, and I wanted to share them with you today as a form of solidarity in case you're going through something similar! Bear and I spent a good chunk of our Tuesday sending out emails and applications to different festivals and local venues to start playing more...

Hi Reader! For many of us, August is back-to-school season -- and even though it's been about 7.5 years since I graduated from University College of Cork (don't get me started on how time flies), the back-to-school mentality has crept its way into my life in new ways. Namely, the desire to start new projects, improve on skills that have been cruising on autopilot, and factor in some time for creativity and play. I've been playing through the tunes in the back of Matt Cranitch's orange book...

Hi Reader! I am a Suzuki kid -- around the age of 5, my mom encouraged me to pick a musical instrument to start learning, and I chose the violin. We used to listen to a lot of Classical for Kids cds, and I particularly liked the Vivaldi story where the young orphan Catarina takes to the streets of Venice to track down a stolen Stradivarius. It was a mix of storytelling and playing snippets of the Four Seasons throughout the CD. Funnily enough, we also had a copy of the Seal Maiden CD narrated...