Listen Up Holiday Sale! Listen Free, Download or Buy! HOLIDAY A-B-C's: A. DOWNLOAD MY HOLIDAY MUSIC COLLECTION! My best friend's favorite recording of mine: "The Gift"! And my vintage "Flute & Harp for Christmas"! Download BOTH for INSTANT Holiday Mood Enhancement! B. VISIT MY XMAS SALE: Everyone said they loved the 25% off "Week of Thanks" sale, so we're extending it 'to DEC. 15th!* Use the code "HoHoHo" for CDs, DVDs, Sheet Music PLUS free gifts and shipping. C. BUY A SHOW! Buy tix for shows right now and BOOM!, you have instant gifts! Some of my favorites are: BLUES SHOW - Natick, MA (Jan. 7) EUGENE, Oregon - (Mar. 7) Or check out the full tour schedule Now, go forth and jollify! (Or not ...) *(When I say "We" in this e-newsletter, by the way, I mean Beatriz, my lovely assistant, Catharine, our intrepid bookkeeper, and me.) And here's what's on my mind: In my 20's, New Age flutist Schawkie Roth asked me to record with him. I was such a musical snob I told him to find someone else. He was persistent, so we finally sat down to play ... and ended up making four beautiful albums together including a gorgeous album of "Flute & Harp" for Christmas. And he taught me a life lesson you can read at my blog. Just yesterday, in Atlanta, I was wearin' a hoop skirt, sippin' sweet iced tea and flutterin' mah eyelashes at a handsome man with a thin, dark moustache. Oh maiy!! OK, not really. I was in Atlanta, for sure, but no Rhett Butler. I was at a conference with about 160 other passionate, creative entrepreneurs, 95% of them women ... and I just realized I don't have a single photo to show you! But I DO have some cool excerpts from ... "Mutiny on the Facebook!"... So, here's what happened: After years on the fence about Facebook, I realized last week that Facebook is whatever you make it, and I posted two burning questions and, hey -- all you folks on my Facebook "Official" Fan page -- YOU ROCK!!! We had two conversations this week that ... well ... they made me feel connected. Which is what social media is supposed to do, right? It was fun to really 'get' that! One thread was about musical notation and the other about maggots and from the flurry of comments I learned many things about both. You can read it all at this blog post or join the conversation by "liking" this page. Blues, Blues, Blues! After last week's e-newsletter, where I said how excited I am about my Jan. 7th BLUES show at TCAN (Center for Arts in Natick) and how I'm working on developing Blues in keys other than F & Bb (my preferred keys) -- reader Patrick Gaffey kindly emailed to tell me: "Thelonious Monk, of course, wrote many of the most interesting takes on the blues, but every single blues he ever wrote, he wrote in Bb, I'm sure for some very conscious and well thought out reason." Thank you, Patrick, for that Note of Encouragement in Bb!! I'm in the middle of a couple of Blues projects - one is about teaching Blues and the other is about exploring Blues for myself. You can read about my workshop last Sunday teaching adult beginners and professionals a combination of Blues and passion in Atlanta. I'm fascinated by how structure and freedom enhance each other, and Blues is one of the greatest laboratories for that exploration: the basic structure is so simple and yet the possibilities for expression and freedom are endless. And anyone can do it. If you structure it right, beginners and professionals can even do it together in ways that are challenging and satisfying for both of them -- so it becomes an opportunity for both individual expression and common experience. And it's REALLY fun to listen to! So go buy your tickets to my Special BLUES Show at The Center for Arts in Natick on January 7th -it's the first Saturday after New Years - one of those moments when you most need the Blues! Not in the Boston area and don't want to fly there in January (I don't blame you ... see my turbulence blog) ... but I'll bet you have friends in the Boston area - so get them tickets for Christmas! And check out my tour schedule for 2012 - I'll be all over the U.S. - and hopefully near you! And I'll see you next week! p.s. I originally wrote you a "p.s." about my turbulent plane flight back from Atlanta, but it got so long I made it into a blog, Guitar legend Steve Vai calls her the "Jimi Hendrix of the harp." The New York Times credits her with shaping the serenely Olympian harp into a jazz instrument by warping it closer to the Blues." Deborah Henson-Conant's music ranges from Blues to Flamenco, in a relentless exploration of the instrument that was invented specifically for her by the CAMAC company in France: a 32-string, 11-pound electric harp she slings on like an electric guitar. She combines music, theater and humor - with a voice, which has been compared to Carly Simon and an onstage energy that's been compared to Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. "The instrument forced me to rip apart any preconceptions. Nobody had ever tried to get these sounds out of a harp, so I simply had to stop thinking of it as a harp, and open my mind to everything else it could be," says the composing performer. That led to the development of music that's won her a GRAMMY nomination, PBS television music special, first prize in the International Songwriting Competition, and invitations to perform worldwide as a solo performer and with orchestras.