My passions include playing piano, composing and arranging music, singing and performing, art (drawing, painting, crafts+), cooking, baking, and writing.

As of 2026, I have been playing piano for 36 years and counting. I have been teaching piano lessons for 8 years.

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The Long-Short Summary

How did I get here? It’s been a long journey with an extensively unpredictable and “scenic” route. When I look back, I think getting here shouldn’t have been such a long hike. Yet, my gut suggests that without the uphill climb, the not-so-short shortcuts, and more-than-a-few dead-ends, I may not have ever found this idyllic location.

Music was always a part of my life growing up. My mother ensured my sisters and I learned to sing melody and harmony as soon as we could follow a tune. But my first big musical core memory was when one of my sisters was taking piano lessons. I snuck a peek at the first couple pages of her level-one piano books and saw the opening grand staff with the notes from F2 all the way up to F5. They made perfect sense to me sitting just as they should on those lines. It was if I had always known them and that page was reminding me I’d forgotten.

I took piano lessons, from a family friend, sometime between the ages of 11-13. I zoomed through the books as fast as I could. I got to level four, but I avoided theory and technique at all costs. I didn’t know I had a knack for playing, so I quit when I got tired of the lesson-book music. All I wanted to play was “From a Distance” by Bette Middler. From that time forward I played only what I wanted to play when I wanted to play it.

When concert band and choir were offered in school, I joined. I inherited my eldest sister’s clarinet and sat first chair from 6^th grade-12^th grade. In choir I sang soprano. I took part in the musicals (but was too tall for a lead role). I even won a small choir scholarship to the local community college, singing soprano. I sang with the college for my freshman year and regularly helped accompany on piano.

During all of this time, I continued to teach myself how to play piano from the music that I could get my hands on. I was an excellent sight-reader, but my lack of technique and theory held me back, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought I struggled to improve because I wasn’t a real pianist; because I hadn’t taken real lessons from a real teacher. When I saw other kids accompanying the school jazz band, I always thought, “I wish I was a musician, like that.”

As the years passed, I continued to play the piano and accompany at church. I continued to sing in church choir and even occasionally arranged or altered music or sang the occasional solo. I got married and went about my education and career. I didn’t choose to pursue music because I thought it was “just a hobby”.

One of the dangers of creativity is comparing our efforts to others. As there is always someone better, this is a non-productive comparison. Throughout my life I have always used comparison to silence opportunity. So, because I didn’t feel I was a musician, I turned to creative writing. It seemed like the kind of creativity I could be successful at without a degree. So, I dove in and spent twenty-five years. This is where I hit “more-than-a-few dead ends”.

Then, I went through a painful divorce. Experiences like that make you look at yourself and ask a lot of questions. I moved home and got to spend five full years just working on me. I played the piano more than I ever had. I accompanied our church choir and took on a handful of piano students. I began to improve a little as I began to see the value of technique and theory. But right as I was hitting my musical stride, my husband and children entered my life. Though I never stopped writing or playing piano, everything creative went into stasis.

One thing that never occurred to me was that I was my biggest critic and the source of all my limiting beliefs and creative blocks. With few exceptions, my family and friends have always been supportive of anything I have ever tried to do. So, until recently, I thought creative writing was the only avenue I could pursue as a creative career. Then, a dear friend gifted me The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. This book had the right framework to help me discover these limiting beliefs and creative blocks. All my “morning pages”, a type of creative meditation, led me back to music.

Since then, I have focused on back-filling all the technique and music theory gaps in my musical knowledge while simultaneously responding to the call to write music. I have composed many original pieces for the piano, several arrangements, and many more are planned or in process. I recently finished writing my first, full-length musical (music, lyrics, and book). I hoping to venture into orchestra composition and anywhere else my path leads. On this musical path I feel at home, creatively, for the first time in my life. I hope something about my journey resonates with and inspires you.

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If you would like to join my musical journey, please visit tolleycreative.substack.com and subscribe to receive free sheet music each month as well as a 70% discount on creative consultations.