Hip Harp Academy: How’s the Experience According to Bonnie Berk

I credit the Academy for giving me not only the patterns, but also the confidence that I could just sit there and play and, play, and it would still be pleasant to hear. And I will tell you too, at the end of the workshop, a young woman came up to me and she said, “I’m getting married in the fall and I would love for you to be at my wedding, to play at me wedding.”

And ordinarily, I wouldn’t have never, because I don’t play a lot of recognizable tunes, and I would never have committed to that. And I just thought, you know what? If she liked what I did, yeah, I’ll play at her wedding. So I told my husband and he said, “Oh my gosh, you would have never, ever done that before.” And, I said yeah. I really feel like this whole experience of being in the academy has given me what I need to continue going forward in a positive direction.