A lovely article about her and her session work here
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Sheila Bromberg & The Beatles
Interview with Sheila Bromberg, who played harp on the Beatles track 'She's leaving home'. With Ringo Starr on the One Show.
A lovely article about her and her session work here
A lovely article about her and her session work here
Sunday, 6 October 2013
Why are harps harp shaped
Very interesting article by Jon Butterworth in The Guardian and fascinating to read about it from a physics point of view.
Also in the article are links to a research paper by Chris Waltham on harp design and construction.
For the less scientifically minded the images of the harp soundwaves are fascinating.
link to The Guardian article is here
For the less scientifically minded the images of the harp soundwaves are fascinating.
link to The Guardian article is here
Friday, 27 September 2013
La Source
Wow - Alisa Sadikova - (9 years old) playing La Source by Zabel with real musicality.
It's a really hard piece and she makes the huge stretches in the middle section look really easy, I don't know how she does it with her small hands.
Brilliant !!!
It's a really hard piece and she makes the huge stretches in the middle section look really easy, I don't know how she does it with her small hands.
Brilliant !!!
Monday, 16 September 2013
Playing outdoors is no good for the harp...
Considering I have a policy of not playing outdoors with my harps, I've played in some pretty funky outdoor situations this summer....
So for this one, I turned up to a private function only to find it was in a field.
After trying to explain why I couldn't play on grass, the TINIEST of stages was eventually found and some hay bales found to stop the stage from falling over on itself on the very uneven ground.
Romantic looking = possibly?
Sound projection across a field with a waterfall nearby = zero
Still recovering from last nights orchestral summer pops gig in an outdoor theatre, complete with tarpaulin roof but no side panels on a day with terrible weather across the country - freezing rain and howling winds.
Only 3 strings broke, and for the first time in my gigging career I kept the base covers on during a gig. Had a black scarf luckily to disguise the blue base covers a bit.
Only in the UK, would you do an outdoor orchestral gig in the rain, with the wind howling through playing patriotic favourites, wearing fingerless gloves playing "Thunder and Lightning" polka by Strauss.
NO more outdoor gigs this year - PLEASE!!!
Thursday, 15 August 2013
itsy bitsy spider
Yes I know it's only a tiny spider...... but in all the years I've been playing I've never had a spider drop down on my hands whilst I was playing before.
Flys, wasps, daddy longlegs - yes, but never a spider.
Tuesday, 6 August 2013
Breathing
One of my favourite pieces ever... By one of my favourite harpists, Rudiger Oppermann.
His duo with Park Stickney is amazing and his music is utterly brilliant, full of colour and soul. The duo version of this piece on their CD, Harp Summit is sublime and I think his solo harp version is pretty damn good too.
I was recommended to buy their CD by a friend who said it was one of the best harp CDs ever, and they certainly weren't wrong, if it isn't already in your harp collection you should get it!
His duo with Park Stickney is amazing and his music is utterly brilliant, full of colour and soul. The duo version of this piece on their CD, Harp Summit is sublime and I think his solo harp version is pretty damn good too.
I was recommended to buy their CD by a friend who said it was one of the best harp CDs ever, and they certainly weren't wrong, if it isn't already in your harp collection you should get it!
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Remy wins Gold!
Congratulations to Remy van Kesteren for winning the Gold medal in the 9th USA International Harp Competition!
I really enjoyed his Saxophone, Violin & Harp CD - Trio42... lovely music!
I really enjoyed his Saxophone, Violin & Harp CD - Trio42... lovely music!
Sunday, 30 June 2013
Lots of YPG
Wow, June has sped by.... lot of gigs this month, but one of the loveliest gigs I did was a rather bizarre but brilliant educational event I took part in as part of the Barnaby Festival in Macclesfield.
It was an ingenious introduction to instruments of the orchestra, set in Macclesfield library. There were groups of string and wind players spread out on the ground floor of the library, with brass and percussion players upstairs and the harp in the corridor.
There were tours every half hour with a stream of visitors to each group of musicians. As the tour party arrived at your spot, you played your cadenza from Britten's Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra. After each tour party had heard all the cadenzas from the various instruments they could then go off and have a go on the various instruments. After playing the first cadenza, there was a steady stream of children wanting a go on the harp throughout the morning.
Luckily I had my lovely teenage daughter with me as my official roadie that day, as well as someone who had volunteered to help fend off little fingers from the harps as I was playing, and boy did I need them both!
I took my little harp for everyone to have a go on, and it was a pretty full on morning of playing YPG cadenza lots of times and then supervising lots of very young children having a go on the lever harp.
The pictures make it look a lot more relaxed and sedate then it actually was, as it was usually at least 2 children having a go on the lever harp at the same time as there were just so many of them wanting a go. It was a brilliant event and lovely to introduce the harp to so many young (and not so young) people.
Never have I been as in need of a restorative cup of tea, as after that gig.
A brilliant concept of an educational event and I was very glad to have been a small part of it.
It was an ingenious introduction to instruments of the orchestra, set in Macclesfield library. There were groups of string and wind players spread out on the ground floor of the library, with brass and percussion players upstairs and the harp in the corridor.
There were tours every half hour with a stream of visitors to each group of musicians. As the tour party arrived at your spot, you played your cadenza from Britten's Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra. After each tour party had heard all the cadenzas from the various instruments they could then go off and have a go on the various instruments. After playing the first cadenza, there was a steady stream of children wanting a go on the harp throughout the morning.
Luckily I had my lovely teenage daughter with me as my official roadie that day, as well as someone who had volunteered to help fend off little fingers from the harps as I was playing, and boy did I need them both!
I took my little harp for everyone to have a go on, and it was a pretty full on morning of playing YPG cadenza lots of times and then supervising lots of very young children having a go on the lever harp.
The pictures make it look a lot more relaxed and sedate then it actually was, as it was usually at least 2 children having a go on the lever harp at the same time as there were just so many of them wanting a go. It was a brilliant event and lovely to introduce the harp to so many young (and not so young) people.
Never have I been as in need of a restorative cup of tea, as after that gig.
A brilliant concept of an educational event and I was very glad to have been a small part of it.
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Marisa Robles interview
The wonderful Marisa Robles being interviewed by Ieaun Jones at the UKHA Christmas party last year. Marisa talks about her early life in Spain, coming to London, working with James Galway, teaching at the Royal College of Music, her views on competitions etc.
Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy - in 4 parts.... well worth viewing.
with thanks to Russell at Raws Production for the excellent videos.
If you are a harpist in the UK and you are not yet a member of the United Kingdom Harp Association, please join. It's for ALL harpists across the UK, and next year is the associations 50th year.
Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy - in 4 parts.... well worth viewing.
with thanks to Russell at Raws Production for the excellent videos.
If you are a harpist in the UK and you are not yet a member of the United Kingdom Harp Association, please join. It's for ALL harpists across the UK, and next year is the associations 50th year.
Sunday, 12 May 2013
digital music stand
I had to leave my bag with all my wedding music in the car a while back, and I suddenly panicked that if my car was stolen, I could replace my car..... but I've spent nearly 30 years collecting my wedding music and that was irreplaceable.
So I've spent the last couple of months, scanning all my music that I use on weddings and functions, and I thought that whilst I was doing that, I may as well see about putting all the music on iPad so I could use that instead of carrying round TONS of music to every gig.
I was a bit nervous about using the iPad on gigs. First up, my eyesight is not great and an iPad is not big. Also I wanted to have the music as I would have it on a music stand - e.g. 2 pages side by side, and not single pages having to turn all the time. This means that the music ends up being a quarter of the size you are used to seeing.
However - and here is the surprise - because the music is backlit from the iPad, the smallness of size didn't bother me. Even with my dodgy eyesight. I wouldn't want to sight-read something that size that I hadn't seen before on the iPad, (although it's possible) but really you shouldn't be sight-reading on any gig.
I've done 3 gigs now using the iPad and they have all been ok. However, during the wedding ceremony itself, I had a hard copy of the bridal processional on the stand, which was a good call as the registrar gave me no time or notice before announcing the arrival of the bridal party and the cue for playing that piece! Not good to be thumbing through the controls of the iPad then, so better to have that piece of music on the stand.
PLUS POINTS.
MINUS POINTS.
TECH STUFF.
I already had a good scanner, iPad and a Dropbox account. I saved all the scans into my dropbox account. I downloaded an app called ForScore onto iPad (£4.99). You can upload your scores from your dropbox account into iPad.*
Within ForScore you can make the pages 2up (display 2 pages at a time). The best thing about this app is that you can create as many key words as possible against each piece and then make set lists either in advance or on the fly using the key words. Want to play all your Welsh music? Or your Jewish music? Or all your upbeat tunes for drinks receptions? Or all your songs from the shows? If you spend a bit of time labelling all the key words against each piece, it's time well spent.
Personally I'm already finding that there are lots of tunes that I haven't played on gigs for ages... so many good tunes I had forgotten I had!
I would recommend that when you scan the music in, that you do the pedal markings on the original in red or blue pen and scan in colour rather than black and white.
I did an hour at a time scanning and labelling and it took me nearly a couple of months to get it all done. If I had sat and done it all in one go, it probably would have taken a couple of days.
Once it's done, it's done. And with it all on Dropbox, you'll never lose your music and can access it on any device through Dropbox. ForScore is for use on one device only.
* Rather than use the 2up facility in ForScore, I inserted the scanned images into a landscape Word document, then saved the word doc as a PDF into Dropbox. The reason being that if something went wrong with the ForScore app, I do then have the music in a readable format in Dropbox.
You can buy a foot pedal which you link to the iPad via Bluetooth which will turn the page on the screen in ForScore. However, I think harpists have enough pedals to think about with having another one to use.
Sorry for long post, but it's good to go digital!
So I've spent the last couple of months, scanning all my music that I use on weddings and functions, and I thought that whilst I was doing that, I may as well see about putting all the music on iPad so I could use that instead of carrying round TONS of music to every gig.
I was a bit nervous about using the iPad on gigs. First up, my eyesight is not great and an iPad is not big. Also I wanted to have the music as I would have it on a music stand - e.g. 2 pages side by side, and not single pages having to turn all the time. This means that the music ends up being a quarter of the size you are used to seeing.
However - and here is the surprise - because the music is backlit from the iPad, the smallness of size didn't bother me. Even with my dodgy eyesight. I wouldn't want to sight-read something that size that I hadn't seen before on the iPad, (although it's possible) but really you shouldn't be sight-reading on any gig.
I've done 3 gigs now using the iPad and they have all been ok. However, during the wedding ceremony itself, I had a hard copy of the bridal processional on the stand, which was a good call as the registrar gave me no time or notice before announcing the arrival of the bridal party and the cue for playing that piece! Not good to be thumbing through the controls of the iPad then, so better to have that piece of music on the stand.
PLUS POINTS.
- Don't need music stand lights
- Don't need pegs to hold the music down
- Don't need to struggle with bag full of loads of music
- Once you get used to it, turning music pages on iPad is really quick and easy.
- Have access to your entire collection of music, more than you are used to fitting into your gig bag.
MINUS POINTS.
- Security - may need to do something so that someone can't take it off your stand whilst you are playing.
- Bright sunlight - I've not been in that situation yet, but it's worth thinking about.
TECH STUFF.
I already had a good scanner, iPad and a Dropbox account. I saved all the scans into my dropbox account. I downloaded an app called ForScore onto iPad (£4.99). You can upload your scores from your dropbox account into iPad.*
Within ForScore you can make the pages 2up (display 2 pages at a time). The best thing about this app is that you can create as many key words as possible against each piece and then make set lists either in advance or on the fly using the key words. Want to play all your Welsh music? Or your Jewish music? Or all your upbeat tunes for drinks receptions? Or all your songs from the shows? If you spend a bit of time labelling all the key words against each piece, it's time well spent.
Personally I'm already finding that there are lots of tunes that I haven't played on gigs for ages... so many good tunes I had forgotten I had!
I would recommend that when you scan the music in, that you do the pedal markings on the original in red or blue pen and scan in colour rather than black and white.
I did an hour at a time scanning and labelling and it took me nearly a couple of months to get it all done. If I had sat and done it all in one go, it probably would have taken a couple of days.
Once it's done, it's done. And with it all on Dropbox, you'll never lose your music and can access it on any device through Dropbox. ForScore is for use on one device only.
* Rather than use the 2up facility in ForScore, I inserted the scanned images into a landscape Word document, then saved the word doc as a PDF into Dropbox. The reason being that if something went wrong with the ForScore app, I do then have the music in a readable format in Dropbox.
You can buy a foot pedal which you link to the iPad via Bluetooth which will turn the page on the screen in ForScore. However, I think harpists have enough pedals to think about with having another one to use.
Sorry for long post, but it's good to go digital!
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