Dawn Culbertson passed away 25.11.2004, but I decided to keep her nice 
letter from year 2000.
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Dawn Culbertson   Sat, 8 Jan 2000 18:05:36 -0500 (EST)
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I have a master's degree in music composition, but have been in love with
the lute since I heard Julian Bream's "Lute Music from the Royal Courts of
Europe" LP in high school. I studied classical guitar for a number of
years but never really felt any great enthusiasm for it except when I was
playing lute transcriptions on it. I finally got a 10-course lute several
years after graduating, and have been playing ever since (although there
was a period of about 7 years where I rarely played due to a very
demanding radio job). Currently I work part-time for a local newspaper,
where I'm the calendar editor and music/dance critic, and also sing
professionally in a church choir. I'm also active in the local English
country dancing scene, where I often either call or play for dances. I
currently own a 7-course Larry Brown & a 6-course Grant Tomlinson
instrument. The type of lute playing I do ranges from doing background
music for parties, restaurants, etc. to recitals both by myself and with
singers, and falls into 3 basic categories: (1) Renaissance music, (2)
contemporary music I've written and (3) punk lute. The latter involves
performing lute and voice arrangements of songs by groups like the Sex
Pistols, the Ramones and Iggy & the Stooges, and was not my idea
originall.  For some wierd reason people seem to like it (at least,
around here they do).

Dawn Culbertson