

Reviews/Kind Words
Susan and Phil,
Just want to drop you a line to express my appreciation for your help with the OVG this year. Your stage performance is always interesting and brings an additional element to our music world. Wonderful performances! Your classes, likewise, carry that element into the hands of our attendees and expose them to some of the roots of what became our Appalachian music and to the creativity that still awaits the use of the dulcimer community...future songwriters. Thank you, not only for this year, but for the many years of your devotion to the OVG.
--Dan Hamilton, Ohio Valley Gathering 2026
"I've had the delight of watching two long time friends and musicians grow a duo. I've listened to Phil Cooper for years as part of a duo/trio/ensemble, with singing partner Margaret Nelson as the constant through all those years. Phil's darlin’ Susan wrote wonderful songs, sang wacky and ribald songs she'd found elsewhere and became an ever more deft musician through those years. Now they're a duo - February Sky - and the combination of Phil's incredible repertoire of very traditional song and tune and Susan's singer-songwriter orientation and addition of her skill with other instruments have been blended into something very different than what either had done before. Same songs, or tunes from previous repertoires... but whole different flavor. Each time I see them, what they do gets tighter, deeper, more distinctive. 'Course it helps that both are thoughtful, generous people who like each other lots. --Joanne Laessig, Folknet, Cleveland, OH