INSTRUCTOR BIOS 2025 DULCIMER WEEK:
KAREN MUELLER, AUBREY ATWATER, DUSTY THORBURN, & BOB WEBB
Karen Mueller bridges many mountain dulcimer traditions to form her own dynamic style. She began
playing the dulcimer in 1979 by learning the innovative tunes on the Pacific Rim Dulcimer Project record, featuring Neal Hellman, Force & d’Ossche, and Bonnie Carol. From there she began adding traditional Appalachian and Celtic music to her repertoire, and developed her own arrangements of these styles as well as pop, jazz, and original material. Her techniques range from rhythmic flatpicking and strumming to sensitive fingerpicking. Karen grew up in Winfield, KS, home of the Walnut Valley Festival, and was introduced to the dulcimer and autoharp there. She has been a finalist in the National Mountain Dulcimer competition, and first-place winner in autoharp, both at Winfield in the mid-1980s. She is also a member of the Autoharp Hall of Fame.
Karen is a full-time performer and instructor, and has travelled throughout the US and England teaching at major workshops and festivals, including: the Walnut Valley Festival, Kentucky Music Week, Augusta Heritage Center, John C. Campbell Folk School, Nonsuch Dulcimer Weekend (UK), Ozark Folk Center, QuaranTUNE, and dulcimer festivals around the US. Karen has released six solo recordings and several instruction books, including “Favorite Dulcimer Arrangements,” and is featured on two volumes of the “Masters of the Mountain Dulcimer” CD series.
She is an active instructor of private lessons, school classes and residencies, and also performs with Irish singer Katie McMahon, the original lead singer from Riverdance. In demand as a multi-instrumentalist, she also plays and teaches guitar, mandolin, ukulele and Irish bouzouki besides dulcimer and autoharp. A skilled and experienced instructor, Karen works effectively with all levels of students, from new players to advanced. She has also performed the challenging Blackberry Winter dulcimer concerto twice with Minnesota orchestras.
“Karen is a skilled, articulate teacher who is both focused and goal oriented. She has the ability to help students achieve a high level of competence in a short time frame.” — Workshop student
Aubrey Atwater From Warren, RI, award-winning musician, singer, dancer, writer, teacher, and public radio commentator, Aubrey Atwater presents unique and captivating programs of folk music, dance, and narration. For decades, Aubrey has performed throughout the United States and beyond, singing and playing mountain dulcimer, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and whistle, and thrilling audiences with her highly percussive freestyle clogging. With scholarship and humor, Aubrey conveys the heritage behind traditional folk music and dance, showing deep passion and understanding of folk history and key players.
Aubrey is particularly well-known internationally as a mountain dulcimer player and teacher. She teaches a wide variety of unique workshops and uses over twenty tunings, playing styles that are both deeply traditional as well as modern and innovative. She counts long-time friend and mentor Jean Ritchie (1922-2015) as a great influence in her musical and personal life. Also, part of the acclaimed duo, Atwater-Donnelly, Aubrey and her husband, Elwood Donnelly, have fourteen recordings and nine books to their credit.
A professional historian and just another mediocre guitarist confronting middle age, Dusty Thorburn discovered the mountain dulcimer several years ago and has since been doing his best to make up for lost time. He founded River City Dulcimers, a group of musical friends that meets monthly both in-person in northern California and with a larger group online, and is also a Moderator at the popular website Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer. Dusty currently offers private lessons both online and at The Strum Shop in Roseville, CA and has published two books of mountain dulcimer tablature: Lullabies from Around the World for the beginning player and Songs of Old Albion & Erin: Ballads, Airs, and Dances from the 16th to the 18th Centurieswith intermediate-level arrangements of tunes from the early modern British Isles. His lessons, arrangements, and compositions combine a respect for traditional sounds with a modern, blues-influenced sensibility. Dusty can be reached at dustyturtle@gmail.com.
Bob Webb, from Joseph, OR, has played guitar and cello since childhood, and mandolin and mountain dulcimer for over 35 years. He has co-hosted Dulcimer Week in the Wallowas and taught its beginner class to rave reviews since 2011. A resident of Charleston, West Virginia before moving to Oregon, Bob was a member of National Public Radio’s Mountain Stage house band for its first nine years, where he accompanied artists such as Odetta, Tom Paxton, Shawn Colvin, Bill Staines, Peggy Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. He taught over 700 children and adults in summer camps, churches, schools and community centers to make his own design of cardboard box dulcimer. In 2005, he and Heidi Muller co-founded of the Music Mentors after-school instruction program in Charleston that is still continuing today. Bob has taught at festivals including Kentucky Music Week, Colorado Dulcimer Festival, Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering, Wallowa Fiddle Tunes Camp, Ohio Valley Gathering, Gebhard Woods and Dulcimer Chautauqua on the Wabash. He has published instruction and tune books for dulcimer, mandolin and fingerpicked guitar. He performs with Heidi Muller in a duo and they have recorded four CDs together. As a recording engineer with his own studio, Bob has co-produced dozens of CDs for old-time musicians, jazz players, songwriters and storytellers and helped create award-winning public radio documentaries.
Heidi Muller is the organizer of Dulcimer Week in the Wallowas. 
She has played dulcimer for over 30 years and taught at dozens of dulcimer festivals across the country, including QuaranTune, North Georgia Foothills Virtual Fall Festival, Kentucky Music Week, Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering, Dulcimer Chautauqua on the Wabash, Augusta Spring Dulcimer Week, and Northeast Dulcimer Symposium. An award-winning songwriter and guitarist, she performs both solo and in a duo with Bob Webb. Her song, “Leaving the Methow,” was included on the Masters of the Mountain Dulcimer, Vol. II CD. She has recorded five solo CDs, four duo CDs with Bob Webb, and published nine dulcimer songbooks (including Duos, West Virginia Fiddle Tunes, and two volumes of Bill Staines songs for dulcimer) and one book of original songs arranged for guitar accompaniment. Please visit her website at heidimuller.com.