About Linda

LINDA LOWE THOMPSON brings a combination of warmth, humor, intelligence, and skill to all her activities with hammered dulcimer whether teaching or performing. Her instruction book and cassette, BEGINNING HAMMERED DULCIMER, has long been widely used and respected. Anyone using this, no matter what their musical background, can be playing tunes on the dulcimer in just a few minutes. The publication, in 1993, of HAMMERED DULCIMER NOTEBOOK, an encyclopedia of embellishments, was the culmination of a decade of work and experience. She followed, in 1994, with HAMMERED DULCIMER CHRISTMAS, in 1996 with CLASSICAL HAMMERED DULCIMER, and in 1999 with SACRED HAMMERED DULCIMER. Her sensitive playing can be heard on SOUNDS OF CHRISTMAS PAST. She is a frequent contributor to Dulcimer Players News.

LINDA LOWE THOMPSON was born Linda Diane Lowe October 26, 1944. She was raised in Oklahoma, where she married Wesley Thompson in 1963. She knows they were too young to make an intelligent, mature decision, but claims it was the best day’s work she’s yet accomplished. During the next 15 years or so, Linda went to college and had babies: Lisa, in 1964; Jenny, in 1970; and Alex and Ben, in 1974. She first studied piano, then American literature, and was still doing grad work when she first saw a dulcimer at Silver Dollar City, in Missouri. "It was what I’d been looking for all my life...and, I didn’t even know I was looking ‘til I found it." Since then, she’s been a dulcimist/homemaker: teaching, performing, co-coordinating Winter Festival of Acoustic Music, owning and running Harvest Time Music, and writing instructional material for use in teaching, publishing, and articles. Her work with the dulcimer has combined all the lifelong studies of music and of the use of words. She even utilizes the basic tenets of teaching that she learned during a stint teaching learning‑disabled kids to read.

For more than two decades, Linda Lowe Thompson has taught and performed at many of our country’s most highly regarded centers for learning hammered dulcimer: Augusta Heritage Arts Center in Elkins, WV; the Shepherdstown, WV workshops; Kentucky Music Week; The Swannanoah workshops at Warren Wilson College; spring and summer at the Ozark Folk Center; Heartland Dulcimer Camp; Roscoe Village dulcimer weekend in Coshocton, OH, the LSSDS festivals in Texas, and many others. Whenever possible, her husband, Wesley joins Linda and performs on hammered dulcimer and bones while Linda plays hammered dulcimer, autoharp, and keyboard/piano. In addition, Linda claims that Wesley is the finest hammered dulcimer tuner in the continental United States.