Week 5
Old-Time Week
Mountain Dulcimer
Karen Mueller

Karen Mueller has played mountain dulcimer since 1979, and got hooked on old-time music when she first came to the Augusta Heritage Center to teach in 1987. Known as one of the top players in the country on both dulcimer and autoharp, she tours nationally as a solo performer and instructor, and also plays in several groups. Besides her long-time work at Augusta, she has taught at the Swannanoa Gathering, the Ozark Folk Center, Western Carolina University, Kentucky Music Week, Sore Fingers Week in England, and many others. One of her workshop students wrote that “she has the ability to help students achieve a high level of competence in a short time frame.”

Karen won the 1986 International Autoharp Championship and was a National Dulcimer finalist in 1985, both at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, KS. In 2006 she was inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame. She has recorded four critically acclaimed solo CDs: Landscape of the Heart, Clarity, Still Point and Autoharp Gourmet, and is featured on the Masters of the Mountain Dulcimer and Autoharp Legacy anthology CDs. In reviewing her latest CD, Landscape of the Heart, Old-Time Herald magazine calls her playing “brilliant.” Karen is the author of Mel Bay Publishing's Celtic Autoharp book and contributor to their Dulcimer 2000 anthology. While touring extensively as a soloist, she also currently works in the band of Katie McMahon, original lead singer of Riverdance, and in her own old-time trio. Karen is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist; besides autoharp and dulcimer, she plays guitar, mandolin, Irish bouzouki, ukulele and bass dulcimer.