Hey there Reader👋,
Simcha here with a belated New Years email. A bit late, I know! though really, it's never too late to fulfill our dreams, so here goes.

What's inside: 🎵 A Somerset story about believing in your inner song, 🎵 A new Strings of Hope podcast with my first harp teacher Adina Haroz, and 🎵 An Israel harp retreat on the horizon...
​

Lets start with perhaps with one of the biggest highlights and lessons for me in this past year. I want to share something that happened to me while teaching at Somerset Folk Harp Festival this past July.

I found myself nervous, standing in front of a room full of harpists, about to teach a workshop on Turkish and Armenian music - including 'T'kasim', where people take turns improvising while the group holds space for them.

And here's the thing about improvising in front of others: it asks us to be vulnerable. To risk "getting it wrong." To let go of the safety of sheet music and just... trust.

At first, only one or two people shyly took a turn.

And then something beautiful happened.

New melodies started jumping up - first from someone in the corner, then another corner, then from the middle of the room. One by one, as the fear of failure slowly melted away. There was magic in the air. The zoom moderator was tearing up. If I could cry easily, I would have had tears rolling down my cheeks too.

I watched people improvise for the first time in their lives. And they did it. They did it.

This is what I keep coming back to as we step into a new year.

Deborah Henson-Conant said something that I love: "You don't have to try to be creative. You ARE naturally creative."

We already have it in us. The music. The creativity. The ability to play from our hearts rather than just the page. We've actually been improvising our whole lives, from our first baby days when creating our first sentences, till today when having a conversation with a friend or loved one. We're actually natural born improvisers, we just dont always know how to let that inner born creativity flow into our music.

What gets in the way isn't lack of talent - it's fear. Fear of mistakes. Fear of not being "good enough."

But here's what I've learned, and what my first harp teacher Adina Haroz shared in our new podcast conversation: mistakes aren't something to be afraid of. They're actually beautiful.

Have you heard of Kintsugi? It's a Japanese art where broken pottery is repaired with gold - honoring the cracks instead of hiding them. When we improvise, every "mistake" is a golden seam waiting to happen.

This is the heart of what I want to teach at Strings of Hope.

Not just techniques and theory (though we'll have plenty of that too). But learning to trust your own inner melody. To throw away the crutch and discover you can dance. To play from the heart, not just the page.

If this speaks to you, I'm opening the Strings of Hope membership in the coming week, it's finally happening 😅. Founding member pricing will be available for those on the waitlist.

→ Join the waitlist here​

🎧 New Strings Of Hope podcast episode!

Speaking of Adina - I'm so excited to share my conversation with her. She was one of Israel's celebrated harpists (and my first teacher), and her story of walking three years to practice on Harpo Marx's donated harp until she could buy her own first harp is incredible. We talk about making dreams happen, mistakes as teachers, and so much more.

→ Listen Here (Links to Spotify, Itunes, and YouTube Podcasts)

One more thing... 🥁🥁🥁

Stay tuned later this week - I'll be announcing something I've been dreaming about for a long time:
​The first Strings Of Hope Harp retreat!
​We'll be teaming up with Sophia Wisdom Harps, Sunita Staneslow and some other amazing musicians for an amazing Harp retreat here in the beautiful Galilee mountains of Israel in an ecological settlement just 15 minutes from the Mediterranean ocean.

If that sounds interesting to you, I'd love to hear from you. Just reply to this email and let me know if that sounds like something you would like to join.

Here's to a year of trusting our creativity, making beautiful mistakes, and playing from the heart.

Till next time 🎶

Simcha :)