And Everything is Still...

1,580 miles is a lot of travelling for a gig! But sometimes it's worth it.... Just back from doing a flute, harp and sax gig with Clare Southworth and my husband, Andy in the Dordogne region in France. What a fantastic part of the world, and it was great weather too!

Clare and I also had a great flute and harp gig in Sandbach earlier in the week too.

There were three premiers by us this week (video clips will be up online soon!!)

And Everything is Still.... for flute and harp by Andy Scott

Paquito for flute and harp by Andy Scott

Salt of the Earth for flute, tenor sax and harp by Andy Scott

All of Andy's music for harp (4 new pieces premiered in a week including the solo work premiered by Keziah) will be published and available from Astute Music this coming January.

Crossing Waves

Just back from a pleasant jaunt down to London to see a harp concert at the Forge venue in Camden by Keziah Thomas, who was premiering a piece that she commissioned from my husband, Andy.

She played a very ambitious programme to a room packed full of harpists, which must have been pretty daunting!

The programme was, Suite for Harp by Benjamin Britten, The Pearl Divers by Douglas Gibson, American Harp by Elie Siegmeister, Crossing Waves by Andy Scott, Tanzmusic by Glenn Buhr and Spiders by Paul Patterson.

Keziah did a fabulous job with Andy's piece and I especially enjoyed the Glenn Buhr and Paul Patterson pieces.

This is probably a controversial thing to admit in public....... but I really don't like the Benjamin Britten Suite. I was trying to listen to it tonight with a "fresh pair of ears" and to put my long held reservations about the piece to one side.

Unfortunately the performance tonight just confirmed what I always thought, and that the only reason it is performed is because it is by Benjamin Britten. I am a great fan of his music, but the Suite for Harp is just not a good piece of music. Because there is less music written for the harp compared with other instruments, some pieces, and especially pieces by "name" composers are played more than they deserve to be.

Hopefully with harpists like Keziah commissioning new music and breathing new life into the harp repertoire then harpists in years to come will have a real choice of (and this is the crucial point) music to programme.

In the end, it's all about the music.

Bravo Keziah!

Sandbach Concert Series

I'm working on 3 separate recital programmes at the moment for concerts which I have coming up.

I think that is just about my limit before my head starts to implode!

Most of the past few months has been taken up with the concert series which I have been working on setting up. I did all the applications some months back and fantastically we got all the funding, which was amazing especially in this economic climate. I'm chair of the society and Andy is the artistic director, and it has really taken off with lots of people now involved.

As well as a one hour concert by professional musicians, there is also an art exhibition which is open to anyone in the community, a 30 minutes spotlight concert featuring talented young musicians from the area and raffle with money raised going to local good causes. A full seasons listings plus more information about the series on the website.

Special thanks to everyone who has pulled together to make the concert series happen and especially to Caroline who has (and continues to) work her socks off getting everything ready.

How to tie a harp string

I was so glad when I came across these videos on the web. They are really well demonstrated and there is lots more info about harp care on Steve's site here

Tying a harp sting with an anchor, 0-3rd octaves by Steve Moss

Tying a harp string without an anchor, 4th and 5th octaves by Steve Moss

Paris harp joy

Imagine my utter joy when being taken away for a surprise short break in Paris by my lovely hubby and just around the corner from our hotel we come across this amazing sight.... I was peering through the window at night time when I first saw it!

utter joy!!

So, the next day we went into the main harp shop which was 2 doors down from this workshop, and very generously the owner, Alexandre Budin showed me around his workshop. So many wonderful and amazingly historic harps.

I was like a silly kid in a sweet shop that had been given ALL the best sweets.

Alexandre was a total star and despite my chronic lack of French, he gave me a tour in English around the wonderful harps in his workshop.

So the show stopper that had me stop in awe in the window the night before was of course the Pleyel cross strung harp. I have never seen one in the flesh before. And he has TWO in his workshop.

Clockwise from centre, Pleyel cross strung harp (that Debussy wrote his Dance Sacree & Profane for), Erat harp, 2 single action Budin harps at front (made entirely from carbon fibre), the beauty on the left being a Japanese style Erard harp (only 7 were ever made and I could kick myself that I didn't get more of it in the photo, a stunner of a harp.)

So, Alexandre said the Japanese Erard unfortunately would not be playable when they finished work on it, but I'm pretty sure he said that this Pleyel would eventually be playable.

Just when it couldn't get any better (there was a Naderman harp!) Alexandre casually told me that the Erard harp in picture above (foreground minus strings) was unfortunately dead and would never be playable again but they kept it for sentimental reasons because it had belonged to Lily Laskine.

midi harp

So - more about the midi harp in due course, as Sioned Williams will be premiering a midi harp concerto with the BBC S.O January 2011 that she has commissioned from Graham Fitkin.

What an amazing instrument! Here is Arnaud Roy playing on the midi harp.

I'm not personally a fan of blue coloured harps so good to see that Camac have just built a striking black & white midi harp

trusty steed

I've clocked up a substantial amount of miles in my car past month, with just short of 1,000 in 4 days last week!

I have a Volvo V70 estate, which I bought second hand a few years back and it's the first Volvo I've owned. What a brilliant car, it fits the harp in with loads of room for other gear and is so comfortable to drive.

So considering the very silly amount of miles it does, recently I've had to have 2 new front tyres, and new ball joint for the suspension and today I needed to get it a new battery. Which is not bad really.

Q. Where's the battery then in a Volvo estate? It has needed jump starting with jump leads the past 4 days hence me getting the new battery this morning, and I got a nice surprise when I opened the bonnet looking for the battery.

Thank goodness for smartphones and being able to google "where's my battery on a Volvo V70" when you are stuck in the middle of nowhere. There is a jump starting point under the bonnet, but the actual battery is not there.

A. In the boot of course. Lift up the little seats in the boot space, lift up the flooring and it's under there silly!

the glamourous life

I bought a Victorian style hooped underskirt from the most amazing "aladin's cave" of a theatrical costume shop in Cambridge today.

I had just gone with a friend who was buying a costume for a show she is doing and went into a frenzy when I saw all the Victorian dresses they had.

However, after trying on a few dresses I decided that the one I already have is best but was in need of enormous hoop underskirt to make it all stick out!

Just need to get a few more props sorted out with Richard then I think we are all ready for our first Queen Victoria's Parlour gig next week. So just about to pop out and rummage through some charity shops for props.

I've just been doing some practice with the hooped underskirt over my jeans to see how it feels playing the harp with it on, and am very glad I did as it is very, very strange. How did the Victorian ladies manage?

I've also got a bit of a cold in my right ear so I need to play with an ear plug at the moment. The combination of hooped skirt over jeans, t-shirt, flip flops and big yellow ear plug sticking out of right ear is not the most glamourous look! Hopefully my ear should be ok by tomorrow for the last of the run of Katherine Jenkins gigs that I'm doing this summer.

My One and Only Love

Just been showing a harp student some harp videos and have stumbled on this amazing video on YouTube which I've just added to my "inspiring harp videos" page on this blog.

Definitely the most tasteful jazz harp I have ever heard. Texan harpist Cindy Horstman in a duo with bass player Michael Medina.

Old v New

I played on a Katherine Jenkins gig yesterday at the Llangollen Eistedfodd and it's going to be broadcast on S4C this Sunday 11th July at 8pm. I played David of the White Rock as a duet with Katherine again, this time a very different and scarily chromatic arrangement, and there were also a few harp solos in the Welsh Medleys.

So that got me thinking about why I used my black Aurora harp and not the gold Iris, especially as that concert was being broadcast on the telly...

I really appreciate having two harps, especially as I've been managing with just one up until now. The new gold Iris is at the Phil at the moment, so it was convenience really that I used the black Aurora. But actually I was really glad I didn't use the gold Iris!

The Iris is now starting to bed in now that it is nearly a year old and has an amazing rich sound which really carries across an auditorium. For solo and orchestral work it is a truly stunning instrument to play and you can get a real range of dynamics.

For Katherines gigs though all the instruments are miked up and the harp has 2 very close mikes, 1 at the bass end and 1 at the top. The engineers get a great sound (so I'm told) of the harp out at the front, but it is a complete nightmare playing with such close mikes. You have to be so aware of every finger noise, damp and pedal noise.

My Iris produces so much sound that I'm very conscious of having to damp all the time especially the mid range. You don't notice that when you play acoustically but it really shows up whenever I have done some test digital recordings.

I was going to do a CD recording earlier this year, but I've postponed it until the harp settles in and matures a bit more and generally doesn't have so much "boom" on a close up microphone.

So the Aurora came into it's own! It's a really lovely harp with a great sound and I'm very lucky to have two such amazing harps.