As a consummate musician, memorable performer, six-time Autoharp Champion, attentive teacher, and Autoharp Hall of Famer, Lucille Reilly returns to the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering with music still dripping from her fingers, while yearning to share myriad autoharping tips, tricks and how-tos with MLAG attendees.

Lucille’s impressive list of performance venues includes The Academy of Music, Philadelphia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; City Stages, Birmingham, AL; Denver (CO) Center for the Performing Arts; Westminster Choir College (her alma mater); Philadelphia Folk Festival and numerous chamber-music series across the USA.  As a teacher, she has served autoharpists’ needs at the Phoenix Autoharp Retreat, Ozark Folk Center, Southern Belles Autoharp Workshop, California Autoharp Gathering, Walnut Valley Festival (Winfield, KS), Sore Fingers Summer School (UK), Northwest Autoharp Gathering and Mountain Laurel’s pre-Gathering classes.  2027 marks Lucille’s seventh featured appearance at the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering.

Lucille has three recordings to her credit and is the author of Chords Aplenty (a comprehensive chords reference) and a monograph series for diatonic autoharp, with three autoharp books in the works.  She authored all 83 installments of her column, “The Diatonic Corner,” in Autoharp Quarterly from August 2002 through its final issue in August 2021.

Just when it seems like Lucille has “done it all,” she became in recent years an accidental autoharp historian, focusing much of her research on autoharp developments during the late 19^th century.  She has uncovered a wealth of previously unknown details that enrich the autoharp’s story, some of which MLAG attendees will surely be treated to.

A New Jersey native, Lucille lives in Colorado with her husband, three cats, four hammered dulcimers, eight diatonic autoharps, eleven vintage autoharps, a dough whisk, knitting needles with yarn stash and a collection of wooden nickels.