Brenda Bowen Cox grew up playing piano from an early age and went on to study piano, organ, and classical guitar at Ball State University, where she earned degrees in music education and deaf education. While teaching in the public schools, she developed a fondness for folk and traditional music on the fretted dulcimer and other stringed instruments. She later earned her M.Ed. in deaf education and audiology from the University of Virginia, where she worked her way through graduate school playing music and performing with a local dance troupe.

Through an ever-deepening acquaintance with instrument builders, she began learning about the harp and embarked on an ongoing quest into Celtic music. In the 1990s she founded the Harpers’ Circle of Kentucky and for ten years performed in Ceol Cridhe, a Celtic band well known in central Kentucky. Her harp, keyboard, and concertina playing are featured on the band’s CD, “Like A Heartbeat.” Brenda’s involvement with the harp led her to the Music for Healing and Transition Program, and she received certification as a Certified Music Practitioner in 1997. Her belief in the healing powers of live harp music has been validated by her involvement with hospices in Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas, and Virginia, where she has played bedside for hospice patients.

In 1996, Brenda first visited Cape Breton Island in Maritime Canada to learn the unique style of piano accompaniment to that particular type of traditional fiddle playing. She authored two books of Cape Breton music arranged for harp. With a summer home on the island, Brenda and her husband spend half the year there attending dances, sessions, festivals, and other musical events. In addition to her books of Cape Breton arrangements, Brenda has arranged and composed several other books of sheet music, including a therapeutic music book for harp and keyboard called “A Peaceful Harbor.”

Brenda currently works as a therapeutic musician for Hospice of the Piedmont. She is also the harp instructor at the Blue Ridge Irish Music School, where she met Tes and Mimi, and brightwood was formed.

photo credit: Kathy Mayhue