Cynthia Bythell Music

Dear (Adult Student Name Withheld), After several tearful sessions, it’s no wonder you would be thinking of “taking a break” from your singing lessons. Usually when a student quits, my response is, “I understand, and it has been a pleasure working with you.” This is different because I have grown to care about you as…

Writing a gratitude list of things for which I’m truly thankful, is always enlightening and uplifting for me. Some of my friends don’t find it so easy. One of them explained that he had too many “You should be grateful”s thrown at him as a kid. He definitely picked up a negative feeling about giving…

Doesn’t it feel like we just went through a fast forward?  Next thing we know, we’ll all be singing Auld Lang Syne again!  Speaking of which, I hope your holidays were as festive as mine, but now what?  For me, it’s time to get my students ready for the Winter Share The Music Day where the…

As it turns out, the audition video for America’s Got Talent can now be 2 to 3 minutes instead of the previous 90 seconds. (I never did figure out how I was going to do the “minute and a half thing” without hacking my precious original to death!)  Once the song could be a little longer, it was…

The first day of Spring is coming, and so is my birthday.  This year’s celebration is special because I start the day by playing and singing my latest incarnation of my old song The Wish Planet for a very small congregation of loving listeners at The Castro Valley Unity Church.  It’s a safe place to…

Whoa! 2018. Seriously? Sometimes it feels like I’m being pole vaulted through time. There’s never enough of it. The older I get the more important it feels not to fritter any of it away. Precious stuff it is, and easy to get stressed out trying to squeeze in everything I want to do. Funny thing…