Barbara Stechow Harris Releases Memoir on Touring With the Trapp Family Singers

A Young Singer's Remarkable Journey Across Continents, Cultures, and Stages — Alongside the Legendary Maria Von Trapp

PA, UNITED STATES, July 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Most teenagers spend their sixteenth year navigating high school hallways. Barbara Stechow Harris spent hers performing in twelve languages before audiences across America and abroad, living out of a suitcase with one of the most famous musical families in the world. Sixteen Going on Seventeen: On Tour With the Trapp Family Singers is now available in paperback, hardcover, and eBook formats; a vividly remembered memoir that takes readers behind the curtain of the Trapp Family Singers' final years of touring, seen through the eyes of the young woman who stepped in to help carry their legacy forward.

When Barbara graduated early from high school at sixteen, she could not have anticipated what awaited her. She had grown up steeped in music. But nothing quite prepared her for the call that would reshape the next two years of her life: joining the Trapp Family Singers as a touring member, filling a role that placed her at the heart of an internationally beloved ensemble. What followed was an education no classroom could offer. She traveled across continents, performed on storied stages, absorbed new languages and customs, and found herself navigating daily life alongside Maria Von Trapp herself, the real woman behind a story the world thought it already knew.

At its heart, Sixteen Going on Seventeen is a coming-of-age story unlike any other. Barbara writes with the honesty and clarity of someone who lived through something extraordinary before she had the words to fully describe it. She brings to the page not only the music and the performances, but the texture of those years: the wonder, the exhaustion, the friendships formed on the road, and the quiet, formative weight of being young and far from home in the company of greatness. Drawing on actual reviews, personal photographs, and memories preserved with rare detail, she offers a portrait of the Trapp Family Singers that is both fresh and deeply personal.

"I was sixteen years old, singing in twelve languages on stages across the world, and learning what it meant to give everything to the music. Those two years did not just shape my career. They shaped who I became."

Barbara Stechow Harris grew up in Oberlin, Ohio, the daughter of German immigrant parents, and graduated early from high school at age sixteen to tour with the Trapp Family Singers for nearly two years. She later earned a B.A. in Music from Oberlin College and an M.A. in Music from the University of Hawaii and spent a year in Germany as a Fulbright Fellow in 1971 to 1972. She went on to teach music and German in private and public schools in Seattle, Washington and Lansing, Michigan, and has performed with choirs in Germany, Honolulu, Oberlin, Cleveland, Seattle, and Lansing. She is married, has two grown children and two grandchildren, and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The book is available for purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and on the website Barbaraharrisbooks.com in hardback, paperback and eBook in the English language.

To learn more about Barbara Stechow Harris or purchase a copy please visit www.barbaraharrisbooks.com.

To purchase the book on Amazon, please visit here.

To purchase the book on Barnes & Noble, please visit here.

Barbara Harris
Sixteen going on Seventeen
contact@barbaraharrisbooks.com

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