I live in Harrison, Maine, which is in the western foothills of Maine. In fact, our home is located on top of one of those foothills and the mountain view is beautiful.   
My husband, Alan, is a recording studio owner and engineer (www.bakedbeansrecording.com), 
an accomplished guitarist and recently a retired physician.
 

We have four children, two granddaughters and two grandsons, ages 16, 13, 8 and 6 years old.

 

Along with music, a love for art is very much a part of our lives.  My husband's mother, Lee Bean, was a professional artist and art teacher, specializing in water color, in the Norway, Maine area. 

I took lessons with her myself and learned so very much. 

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I love gardening, both veggies and flowers and raising chickens!  I also love my dog, Sammy, a Corgi, who is just 9 months old. (Our beloved Beanie, passed away last summer.)

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Perhaps the most important aspect to our home, is our faith. We are Bible believing Christians and like J.S. Bach, want all of our talents and abilities to bring honor and glory to God. 

 

Although I am a piano teacher, I am a perpetual music student myself! I have often remarked that I am drawn to the piano because of how infinite the mastery of it seems.  I will never live long enough to brush off my hands, wipe my brow and sit back with my feet up, saying:  "There, that's finished!" I have a list the length of my arm at least, of pieces I still want to learn. I hope to be playing and teaching well into my 90's, God willing!

 

My Grandmother, ("Grammy Fleck"), inspired me to play.  She played for her church for nearly 50 years before retiring in her late 70's!  There is something in an older person's playing that just cannot be imitated.  They have a whole life's worth of living pouring out through their souls and right into their music.  That is one reason, I suppose, I can look forward to growing older...I will at least get to play with more and more of the depth I so admire.  "Grammy Fleck" loved to have me play for her and was a great source of encouragement to me.

 

Wanting to be like "Grammy", I started piano lessons at the age of  6 1/2 years.  My father was in the military and we lived in base housing.  People were always moving in and moving out. To my delight,a piano teacher moved in right next door!  I begged to take lessons. Though I had to give up taking "baton" lessons, that was fine with me. My mother, a trumpet player herself, pored over the classified ads, looking for a used upright.  She found one for $25!  It came to live in my bedroom (along with a couple of mice!) as that was the only room with enough space to put a piano.

 

Over the next 6 years, because military life brings so many changes of address, I had 4 different teachers and at least as many method books.  Though I loved the piano, I  now realize how much more I could have accomplished had I worked much harder. I stopped lessons altogether after one move failed 
to yield a local piano teacher.  I graduated from high school, and went off to college to study some other subject.   It wasn't until I was 26, with two small daughters, that I began to play seriously. 

 

I contacted a piano professor at USM school of Music by the name of Janet Reeves. 

I cleaned her house in exchange for piano lessons.  Soon, she helped me prepare for an audition to get into USM School of Music.  Five years later, after many prayers and hard work,juggling of family and school, I graduated in 1997.  I started teaching lessons in 1994 and have been teaching full time with between 30 and 40 students since graduating in '97.