How Do You Find You?: An Interview with Harpist and Educator Robbin Gordon-Cartier
In this special extended episode I speak with harpist and educator Robbin Gordon-Cartier.
I met Robbin at The Somerset Folk Harp Festival where I work as the concert manager. She has inspired me to be a better music teacher, performer and human being. I’m really not saying that lightly. You’ll see in this interview how Robbin doesn’t sugar coat the pain of life. She is always encouraging people and truly sees them. She sees her students, she listens, and she transforms her pain into something that builds her and those around her up. Her vulnerability is one of her biggest strengths as is her talent, huge heart, welcoming smile, and laugh.
I’ve never had so much fun covering such a wide range of important topics. We discuss education, understanding, truly seeing the humanity in each other, her own struggles growing up in the late 60s and early 70s, her own diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis, and her courage to reach out to help others and truly change lives for the better.
“On behalf of all the people who have no voice, these autoimmune diseases are so silent. There are so many people suffering in silence.”
Robbin has been teaching in East Orange, NJ at The Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts for 21 years where she started a harp program that as of the fall of 2020 will have over 50 students learning the harp. Her students are some of the most kind and beautiful musicians I know. I’m sure they take their cue from Ms. Cartier.
When it comes to teaching, Robbin’s goal is for her students to find themselves. She even does a workshop called, “Practice Makes You.” She often reminds her students to, “Stop complaining that you don’t think that you are the best when you don’t have to be THE best. You have to be YOUR best. How about you just be YOUR best. How about you try that? How do you find you?”
Robbin is passionate about helping her students. “We need to be helping our kinds. Kids need a place. Kids need a tribe to get them through these times. I want to prepare them for life.”
“Here’s hoping they find the beautiful part in being together
Hope to find the beauty”
One of the most important things for a teacher to be effective is for your students to know that you care as you watch them grow. Robbin loves being an artist and bringing that to her students. She exposes them to the realization that they don’t have to be stuck in one place, that they have a choice.
“It doesn’t matter your age, your size, your color, just what do your fingers do. How do you play?”
Robbin’s students are reminded to be thankful for their instruments and lessons:
“We’re blessed to have these things called harps.
I continually try to learn and to be better. I know my faults. warm and loving, but you need to practice. this is serious. your parents are sacrificing.”
Robbin’s grandfather was a preacher and she embodies this quote from Proverbs:
“Raise up a child in the way that he shall go when he gets old he won’t depart from it.
”
Links:
Robbin’s Website
Robbin Performing, “Danny Boy” at The Somerset Folk Harp Festival in 2017 as the audience hums along with her.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WDLaz6bsqY
Children’s book based on Robbin’s childhood, “The Girl Who Didn’t Want to Practice by Lisa J. Michaels
ljmichaels.weebly.com/robbin--the-girl-who-didnt-want-to-practice.html
The Somerset Folk Harp Festival
Robbin’s Harp program at The Cicely L. Tyson Community School of Performing and Fine Arts
nj02207379.schoolwires.net/Domain/1169
Robbin Gordon-Cartier and her students from Cicely L. Tyson School of Performing & Fine Arts with the West Shore Symphony.
https://www.hipharp.com/blog/32848
Blog Post interview with Robbin by Bob Glennan
rmg-images.com/2019/08/09/in-life-just-smile/
PBS American Portraits:
www.pbs.org/american-portrait/story/2299/robbin-g-east-orange-nj-a-days-work-is
www.pbs.org/american-portrait/story/2331/robbin-g-east-orange-nj-my-parents-wanted-me-to
www.pbs.org/american-portrait/story/2595/robbin-g-east-orange-nj-you-dont-know-what-its-like-to
Beginning in the Middle