The first woman to have won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship, she is a guitarist and harp guitarist who has performed with the likes of Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Earl Klugh, and more. She has released more than a dozen solo albums, instructional CDs, and DVDs. Her music can be heard in Woody Allen's film, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." Her album "Heartstrings" accompanied astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery and her CD "Nightlight Daylight" was chosen as one of the top 10 CDs of the decade by Guitar Player Magazine.
"That's a CD that I decided, 'This is going to be my gift to the world. This is a CD that's going to have no maximum budget and no time limit.' Whatever every song needed was what it would get. And so it became a double-CD, 30 songs... It took two years."
"That's the challenge, is to keep the joy of the music alive. I've played all different styles of music but the one thing that I keep consistent is I have to love what I'm playing."
"I flew down (to Houston) and played for all the astronauts in the big airplane hangar, and, it was the only show that during my intermission I went and got autographs from the audience."
"Music could open so many doors for people. When you put your heart into it the doors open themselves."
"I kept on reaching for a low, resonating note that was not on my guitar. So the music I was hearing in my head was requiring these low notes and I'd seen pictures of the harp guitar and I said 'That's what would have those low notes that I'm hearing in my music'."
"I just make the music with (the harp guitar) and if that inspires people then that's a good thing."
"I said, 'How can you tell these kids to say No to drugs when you don't give them something to say Yes to?' So I went about trying to find a way to arrange a program to teach guitar and bass to kids who couldn't afford it."
"I played one night... in Paris, opening the show in front of between five and six thousand people, and then the next night I played for a little guitar club, a little house concert in England in front of 20 people. And they both seemed like equal parts of life. I enjoyed both of them in different ways."
"Moonshadow"
"View From Space"