At the beginning of the pandemic, Little Rock vocalist Stephanie Smittle decided to learn how to play an instrument. Her weapon of choice? A 21 bar, 36-string, matte black OS73CE Oscar Schmidt ...
Most people's experiences with the autoharp begin and end with grade school sing-a-longs. But in the 1950s, a man named Mike Seeger proved that you can play real music on the small, 36-string ...
Everyone has dreams but not everyone achieves them. Ray Choi has. Choi is one of the world’s top autoharp players, and he demonstrated it at the 2017 Mountain Laurel Autoharp Championship, according ...
GARDEN GROVE – You probably never heard of Ray Choi. He runs a little music shop in Garden Grove, where he sells an odd instrument with 37 strings. It looks like a zither, which is to say it resembles ...
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado ” Musician Bryan Bowers still sounds shocked about the best review of his career. It happened decades ago when he stepped off stage at a music festival. He saw “Mother” ...
It's the sound that unites Orson Welles and PJ Harvey What is it? Well. A zither is technically any stringed instrument that has the feature of the strings not extending beyond the soundhole or ...
For many, the autoharp is remembered as the slightly geeky, easy-to-play instrument from grade-school music class, or as the accompaniment for folk and country singers in the late 1950s and '60s. It's ...
The 23rd annual Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering kicks off June 26. Some may wonder - why have an entire gathering devoted to an autoharp? Some may even wonder - what does one even play on an ...
He had been an officer in the United States Army, a veterinarian who operated a zoo for jungle animals, and a professional luthier who hand-crafted his own instruments. But by his own admission, ...