Welcome to Lauren Scott's harp blog! I'm a professional harpist based in the UK. Here you will find all sorts of harp musings, in a bid to spread a bit of harpyness. Thanks for visiting!
So, I was playing in a concert with a chamber orchestra tonight and we had just played the Clarinet Concerto by Copland (great piece, loads of harp throughout) and I'm on stage during the interval giving the harp a quick re-tune before the second half starts.
This lady from the audience comes over to the side of the stage and doesn't appear to be visually impaired or drunk.
In all seriousness she calls me over to ask me....
"I've never seen one of those with a projection box on the back before.....
(me - ¿Qué? )
do they all have that?
(me - ¿Qué? )
I had to come over and ask you because I was curious......
do you use your hands to play?
?????
(wait it gets better)
because i can see you were playing with your feet"
Not being really up on the early music scene I hadn't come across her before, but stumbled across a video of her on YouTube.
I've recently bought her album Peiwoh from iTunes and it's been played non-stop since in our house.
Arianna is a fascinating musician, being an acclaimed early music opera singer as well as harpist and has an impressive back catalogue of CDs of early music both as a harpist and separately as singer.
However her latest CDs seem to be of her own compositions played with her band, with Arianna playing triple harp, gothic harp and celtic harps as well as singing. The rest of her band are playing various early and folk string instruments (not sure what they are because of the language on the website!) and also hand percussion.
The result is a very tasteful and sublime world music album which gets the thumbs up from everyone in my household - which is quite a feat as we all have very diverse tastes!
Very difficult to pick a favourite track, possibly Aurora as it's a harp only track. Suite Celtic has a more traditional vibe and shows the musical excellence of all the musicians. A "chill out" track with a very wide appeal is El Llenguatge dels ocells. Although every track on this CD is fantastic.
No UK dates in her concert schedule which is a shame, as I would love to see her live.
Started the rehearsals on nails, Petrenko then wanted picks, and on the final rehearsal on the day of the concert wanted nails.
I completely underestimated the time needed to grow my nails for this gig, and to be honest just didn't think about this piece coming up in the diary and just kept them usual short length.
Arghgh!! They were just too short at the start of the week.
So ended up having to get some false gel nails put on so that the nails were long enough to play with. My nails are very short and are slow to grow!
Only lost 3 false nails during the week which was quite a bizarre sight as they flew off as I was playing during rehearsals.
note to self - don't cut nails before Mahler 6 again.
BTW - In case you are wondering - they are definitely not my nails above. Can you imagine trying to do anything with those nails?
Just finished doing some work with RLPO, a pretty full on programme of Spanish music with loads of harp throughout, and one of the pieces was El Albaicin from the Iberia Suite by Albeniz.
I hadn't played that piece before so I wasn't quite sure about the direction on the music Mettez un papier entre les cordes especially as I was playing right up to the last note in the previous piece and there was only a very short pause before the start of this piece. Which didn't leave much time to turn the page, change the pedals and then thread some paper through the harp strings! But checking with the conductor in the rehearsal he definately wanted the paper between the strings.
What a racket!
It makes a really loud, raucous and horrible sound. I was very unconvinced at the start, but actually by the end of the week I quite liked the effect.
However you need to play very quietly because it makes an incredibly loud sound which cuts straight through the orchestra sound. Plus you have to play extremely rhythmically with very full articulation with as much damping as possible.
Sounds a bit like a buzzing mosquito when you get it right and sounds completely rubbish when you don't!
I had a really lovely day yesterday. Andy and I were playing at friends wedding, and it was great combination of good company, good food and a fabulous setting.
So feeling rather fuzzy today, it seemed a good time to chill out and video Farewell to Stromness. I was inspired to learn this piece recently after listening to Ruth Wall's CD and especially wanted to play it on lever harp rather than concert harp.
I think the sound of the lever harp is well suited to this piece. Although the middle section is a bit chromatic and it would be a lot easier on the concert harp.
My Duo Mandala CD was originally released on Black Box records who were subsequently bought by Sanctuary group who were subsequently bought by Universal Music Group.
So who owns the rights to our CD?
Not had a royalty statement or payment for years and despite trying to chase up who owns the rights for at least 4 years, phone calls and emails have never been returned and just could never find out who to speak to sort this out and kept hitting a brick wall each time when trying to find out.
I've been in touch with other Black Box artists, and they have no idea either.
So last year, Ali and I decided that we were going to re-release our Tapestry CD ourselves so that it could at least be available on the UK iTunes and we could sell them after gigs.
After Ali died last October, I contacted all the composers on the CD and got permission from them that they would be ok with all sales and royalties from the CD going to Ali's memorial fund. All agreed.
What a surprise then to find that it's suddenly available on UK iTunes in December 2010 listed as being released by ASV!!! Up until then it had only been available in the US iTunes.
So if anyone from ASV reads this, could you get in touch with me to explain what is going on? I sent emails to you in 2009 which I never got a reply to.
I've put one of the tracks from the CD on YouTube, with the request that if the viewer enjoys it to donate to Ali's memorial fund.
Got a problem with that? Then sue me....
It's me and Ali playing, Black Box didn't pay for the recording of the CD and I have permission from the composers so as far as I'm concerned I'm not infringing copyright.
Hopefully this legal saga can now be finally put to bed.
It's a lovely track on the video and hopefully it will encourage people to donate to Ali's memorial fund which will help support future young musicians.
I already (sadly) use not 1 but 2 heavy duty covers on my Salvi Iris as well as the column and base covers and of course the dust cover. My Iris is the fattest most overdressed harp in town. But maybe I should use these too..... belt and braces?
How great is this? Only the other day I was trying to sort out a harp for a student who had this problem and I could have done with this
Now this is a known unknown that I know I had no idea even existed, and I find ever so slightly scary.
mm - now I'm going to own up to having just bought the abrasive cord, but I think I'll pass on the stickers to decorate my harps...
It was great to see so many harpists at the premier of Graham Fitkin's Concerto for midi harp this week.
I finally got to meet Graham's partner Ruth Wall, who has a really lovely solo harp CD that she released in 2004. All the music is performed on a 33 string lever harp built by Mark Norris and it is a CD of new accessible tonal music.
My personal favourites are the Farewell to Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davies, Opening by Philip Glass, and The Peninsula Run by Ruth Wall.
Two Movements for Small Harp by Laurence Crane is a bit too minimal for my liking, the 2nd movement especially so, but it does open up a good debate which I think is a problem that besets most harp music.
Because of the natural decay in sound when you pluck a harp string, I think there is a tendency to want to "fill up" the gaps left in what would be sustained notes if played on any other instrument. When in fact it is good to hear the gaps/silences between the plucked notes. Personally I feel there are perhaps too many "gaps" for me in this piece but maybe I'll grow to like this piece more?
All in all a very enjoyable and inspiring CD!
So much so I've just bought the sheet music for the Maxwell Davies and I might even have a go and try it out on my lever harp instead of my concert harp...
I went to see SIoned Williams perform the new concerto by Graham Fitkin for midi harp and orchestra with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at their Maida Vale studios in London yesterday.
Called "No Doubt", Graham used sample voices from public speeches, mostly US politicians during the Iraq war and after about 5 minutes into the piece, the harp strings stopped being used as an "electric harp" and the strings then started triggering sample voice sounds. The harp could then "speak" words. Fascinating stuff!
It was a ground breaking concert which was well supported by lots of harpists coming to see this new instrument in action in a concerto for the first time. The technical aspect of this new harp is that of course not only does each string act as a "trigger" to start a sampled sound but that trigger lasts for as long as the string vibrates. SO for some trigger sounds you would need to damp the string very precisely. All in all, thinking about the possibilities on this instrument certainly makes my head hurt!
Fantastic playing from Sioned and now that she has "laid down the gauntlet" hopefully there will be more good music to come on this new and exciting instrument.
The performance is being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and is well worth listening to. Also very much worth a listen is the In Tune programme that Sioned played on prior to the concert where she and Dominic Murcott (who operated the programming and technical interface side of the midi harp as Sioned played) explain more about the project and how the instrument works.
