Our next concert will be Sunday, October 12, 2025, 6:30 p.m. at Church of the Holy Comforter, 543 Beulah Rd. NE, Vienna, VA
Featuring music of Kapustin, Brahms, Gounod, Mascagni, Bedard, and Bach.
Background
Carmen and I come from a family of five children. We all play the piano. This was inspired by our father, a passionate organist, and our mother, an accomplished pianist. Our dad had an organ in the house before we furnished the living room! Our household grew from one piano to three as all children took piano lessons from the same teacher, Mrs. Virginia Buhn.
We were so lucky to have Mrs. Buhn as our piano teacher. She lived just a couple blocks away and was a top-quality teacher with high expectations! When she moved to Eugene, Oregon after Carmen and I had graduated from high school, my younger siblings drove an hour for piano lessons so they could continue to study with her. On our recent trip to Oregon (summer 2025), we drove to Eugene to visit with her and play the piano for her. She’s 99 years old! It was such a privilege to see her again!
When I was in High School (Carmen was probably in 6th or 7th grade), we performed our first duet recital together. Whenever we are in the same town, we always spend time together playing the piano.
In the following years, Carmen received her BA, MA, and DMA in Piano Performance. I earned the CAGO level at the organ with the American Guild of Organists. We both teach piano.
Performing
in 2019, we prepared the Kapustin Sinfonia Piano duet to perform at our Wolthuis family reunion in Oregon. It is a massive piece and challenging and took a lot of work! We had fun with matching dresses, shoes, and necklaces.
Then in 2024, we traveled to Rome to perform a concert. We added a number of duets and performed the Kapustin piece again.
In July 2025, the Wolthuis siblings and parents traveled to the Netherlands and as part of the trip, we were able to perform a concert in a chapel in Groningen. This was a meaningful place for us since this was the city were our paternal grandfather and his family were baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They emigrated to the United States shortly after joining the church and traveled by train to live in Ogden, Utah. These decisions had a lasting impact on our family. We loved performing in Groningen. The audience was so wonderful, appreciative, and friendly. We talked with those who attended the concert for quite a while after the performance.
In August, we traveled to Sweet Home, Oregon for another concert and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the LDS chapel in Sweet Home. Again, we had a really wonderful audience and we enjoyed seeing people from the congregation that we had grown up with. Satina Tolman wrote a really beautiful article after the performance: New Era Article, Sweet Home, OR August 2025
On October 12, 2025, Carmen and I will be presenting this program at The Church of the Holy Comforter, 543 Beulah Rd. NE, Vienna, VA at 6:30 pm. We hope you can join us! .
Frequently Asked Questions
Q-What is it like preparing a concert together while living on opposite sides of the country?
A-Since we live in Virginia and Utah, practicing together presents its challenges. Fortunately, I am in Utah multiple times during the year since we have two sons who live there with their families. When I’m in Utah, Carmen and I usually wake up at 6 a.m. to grab a few hours of practicing before other activities. We also created recordings for each other to practice with and agreed on tempos and other YouTube recordings that we both liked. Then, once we are in the same city for a performance, we spend as many hours practicing together as possible.
Q-How does your bond as sisters influence the way you play music together?
A-Since we both spent about 10 years with Virginia Buhn, her influence is very strong on our music making. We also become very attuned to our breathing and subtle hand movements. We watch each other’s eyes and heads when we are playing on separate instruments and have learned to communicate with very small movements.
Q-Who usually takes the lead when preparing a piece? or is it always collaborative?
A-Carmen has had more performing experience and her DMA in piano performance has been very valuable in our practices and performing together. We collaborate on many aspects of the performance preparation.
Q-What do you admire most about Carmen’s musicianship?
A- She is a true professional! Her fingers can fly. She has great vision of the musical arc of a piece. She is artistic and is the best pianist I’ve ever played with!
Q-What drew you to pair organ and piano—-two such powerful instruments—for these concerts?
A-It gives us an opportunity to do something together that we really love. It is really a beautiful bonding activity for us. We love performing. We love sharing beautiful music. It’s been fun to travel together. We are actually good travel partners too.
Q-How do you select your repertoire as a duo?
A- A lot of our repertoire choices were inspired by the Scott Brothers. They’ve done quite a few arrangements that are fun and they’ve performed together as well. We look online for other recordings and propose them to each other. We decide if we like them, if they are in the scope of effort and time.
Q-Do you arrange any of the music yourselves, or do you stick with published duets?
A-We tried our hand at arranging a piano-organ duet while we were in Sweet Home this summer. We had been asked to provide a special musical number for our church meeting on Sunday. We were not finding anything that we really liked, but we found a piano arrangement of the hymn “How Gentle God’s Commands” by Sally Deford. I remembered that I had an organ arrangement of the same hymn by Mike Carson. Fortunately, both arrangements started out in the same key. So, we devised a short introduction, we followed Deford’s key change in the middle. I transposed Carson’s hymn for the new key in the middle, and we came up with an ending. So, yes, that was our first foray into arranging and we received some very nice comments afterwards.
Q-Are there challenges in balancing the sound of organ and piano?
A-Most definitely. The accoustics in the room vary from place to place. Sometimes I had to play “ahead” of the music with my fingers compared to what I was hearing. I had to anticipate the next beats in order to stay with the piano. Sometimes the sound in the room is very different from what we hear at the instrument. These are definite challenges that we have to accommodate.
Q-What piece in your current program best shows off your partnership?
A-That’s a tough question. Can I share a few examples? The Ave Maria piece is very emotional and beautiful. We have to be very in tune to each other’s expression of the music. The 2nd Bedard piece has some “conversational” elements between us that are very fun. The 5th Bedard piece is grand and very fun to play together.
Q-Do you see these concerts as the start of an ongoing tradition?
A-Maybe! It has potential! We have some places where we would like to perform in the future.
Q-What do you hope audiences take away from your concerts?
A- I hope they have a very enjoyable evening. I hope they enjoy our sisterhood. I hope they smile. I hope they feel contemplative, inspired, empowered. I hope it brings some peace to their lives.
