Blue Pages

Exploring the MIDI harp

Last week, Jakez and I went to London for a MIDI harp day at the Royal Academy of Music.  Together with composer Dominic Murcott, Jakez presented the harp to harpists in the morning, and the afternoon session was held from the composer's perspective. 

A MIDI harp is not the same as an electric harp.  An electric harp uses electricity to amplify the sound of a harp.  It can have a sound box and also function as an acoustic harp (like Camac's Big Blue concert electric harp), or it can have a solid body and only sound when amplified, like an electric guitar or some of Camac's other electric harps.  You can put the sound through effects pedals and distort it, add reverb or similar, but your core sound is that of a plucked string, that is, of a harp. 

 

A Big Blue harp with an acoustic sound box, but also a pickup on each string so the sound may be amplified.

A solid-body electric lever harp, that only sounds when the amplification is switched on.

A MIDI harp also uses electricity, but additionally has a relationship with a computer. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. When you pluck the string of a MIDI harp, instead of the sound going directly into an amplifier and simply being made louder, the plucked string emits frequencies, which are picked up and interpreted by the inbuilt computer (the MIDI converter) in the harp. The converter sends the MIDI characteristics of the played note to the inbuilt synthesizer (a sound module, in other words).  If you prefer, instead of the internal synthesizer you can use an external laptop, a synthesizer, an  external sound module known as an expander, or any kind of electronic equipment that can be connected to the instrument via MIDI.  Whatever equipment you direct the MIDI signal to, it will produce the result.  This could be a sound - harp piano, violin, saxophone, percussion, electric guitar, full choir - or it could trigger events, such as activating an effect, start recording a loop, switching on a light, or playing a video.  The possibilities are endless.

blue harp, blue hair

Athy loves his blue harp so much, he dyed his hair to match!  Blue really suits them both.

Cristina Braga: new CD and upcoming European tour!

Brazilian blue harp sensation Cristina Braga will be touring Germany and Austria between January 21st and St Valentine's Day!

If you have not yet had the pleasure of hearing Cristina, she is one of Brazil's best-known harpists and singers.  Classically trained, she is principal harpist with the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Theatre Symphony Orchestra, and has just been appointed Professor at the Music School of the Federal University of Rio.  However, she is also a champion of Brazilian music on the harp, and has released thirteen beautiful, poetic CDs exploring, with great richness and variety and diverse ensembles, what it is to play a classical harp with Brazilian soul. 

Cristina's European tour launches her latest CD, HARPABOSSJAZZ.  Impressed by her work, Mathias Winkelmann from Enja Records invited her to make the first truly Bossa Nova record ever recorded by a harpist singer from Rio de Janeiro. The album features Bossa Nova classics like 'The Girl from Ipanema', 'Waters of March', 'How Insensitive' and 'Black Orpheus', but also Cristina's own compositions with Ricardo Medeiros.  The only non-Brazilian song on the disc is 'Dans mon Île' by Henri Salvador, recognized by Tom Jobim as the first ever Bossa Nova-inspired chanson in the world. The CD is for harp, bass, drums and voice, with guests Jessé Sadoc  (trumpet,) David Kuckermann (frame drums) and João Carlos Coutinho (piano and accordion).

Cristina's tour features eleven Bossa Nova concerts,  all played on a  Camac electroacoustic blue harp. It all begins next week in the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, where Cristina will give a masterclass on Villa Lobos, Piazzola, Rodrigo and Ginastera. Following tour dates are below.

MIDI harp day at the Royal Academy of Music, London

On January 26th, Camac's MIDI harp will be travelling to London again for a day at the Royal Academy of Music.  At 2PM, Jakez François and Dominic Murcott will present the MIDI harp.  They will explain the instrument and explore it from the perspectives of both composers and harpists, take questions from the floor, and finish with a performance-improvisation for MIDI harp and laptop.

Admission:  free!

photo:  Yvonne White

 

 

You can read about  the creation of Camac's MIDI concert harp in the following interview with Jakez François.  This interview originally appeared in the Spring-Summer 2009 edition of our quarterly magazine, Harpseasons. 

Florence Ledi:  When and how did you hit upon the idea of making a MIDI harp?

Jakez François:  It was when I was a teenager, and my parents gave me my first electric Camac harp. This was a lever harp, one of Joël Garnier's famous electroharps. At the time, I was playing synthesizers a lot, and I was always going to music shops to try new instruments. It was also around then that Yamaha brought out their famous DX7, one of the first synthesizers with a "dynamic touch" (meaning at last dynamics could be played on it, pp and ff, like on a piano). Above all, it was a MIDI instrument! Thanks to MIDI technology, we could control synthesizers from other synthesizers. This meant we could play ten or more synthesizers simultaneously from one master keyboard, extending the range of available sounds still further. But the biggest revelation was the of the first Roland guitar synthesizer. What a shock I had, when I realised that you could convert the audio signal from a string into a MIDI signal - thereby controlling all the sounds from the synthesizers which fascinated me. So I began to dream of a MIDI harp. It was exactly twenty-five years ago...

Harp, swing and Christine Lutz

Christine Lutz not only has a brilliant website designed like a cellar bar.  She is also a terrific jazz harpist - I came across her CDs at the start of this season.  "La danse des écureuils" is a mixture of standards and original compositions from her quartet Harpiswing (Christine Lutz, harp, Michel Altier, double bass, Vittorio Silvestri, solo guitar, Julien Vandyck, rhythm guitar).  Her most recent album is a duo one with Michel Altier, "Le temps d'un rêve".  "La danse des écureuils" is a lovely and largely up-tempo album with a great sense of swing.  Swing's not always easy on the harp, but the combination of essentially melodic, soloistic harp  treatment brings it off beautifully here.  The all-string instrumentation of harp, bass and two guitars also creates subtle and intrieguing interactions between the instruments, without ever compromising the unity of the whole.   "Le temps d'un rêve" is a fascinating, reflective exploration of the harp and bass's different colours across a wide range of styles, from Chick Corea to Rodgers/Hart, three original compositions from Michel Altier, and "Some day my prince will come."

Christine trained classically, studying harp with Edwige Motte and harmony at the Conservatoire de Roubaix.  It was during her postgraduate studies with Marie Astrid Aufray (harp) and Christian Bellegarde (harmony) at the Conservatoire National de Région in Lille that she began to study bass:  classical, and jazz.  Three years playing in jazz clubs in and around Lille followed, such as in Lille's famous piano bar, Le Caveau de la Treille.   There she played with, among others, Harry Rajaobelison, Jean Christophe Tant, Andry and Bara Ravaloson, Clark Terry, Laurent Cugny and Jeannot Rabeson.  She also quickly became the bass player for many bands, performing with - for example - Michel Barrot, Philippe Petrucciani, Didier Lockwood, Vincent Lafont, Benoit Paillard, Sebastien Germain, Boris Pokora, and Monique Zuppardi.  In 2004, Christine began to play jazz on the harp, first including it in two trios where she played the bass.  Harpiswing was formed in 2006, "La danse des écureuils" recorded in 2006, and "Le temps d'un rêve" in 2008.

I am particularly struck by the way Christine doesn't harmonize much on either album, but rather plays the melody as a soloist, accompanying herself with a bass line or chords.  This makes the rhythm and swing comes across very strongly, and also the harp isn't hidden in the middle of the band.

Some Western Wind

More blue harp repertoire news from Swedish jazz harpist Stina Hellberg. Together with classical composer Patrik Jarlestam, Stina has written a work for blue harp and orchestra, "Some Western Wind", which will be premiered on November 21st as part of the Sandviken Symphony Orchestra's seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations. 

Stina Hellberg.  Photo:  Matts Hellberg

"Some Western Wind" is inspired by the music of Dave Holland, Stina's favourite jazz musician, together with Afro-Cuban and Swedish folk elements.  The work also fuses classical concerto and more improvisatory jazz forms.  There is an extended harp solo, for example, where the double bass, vibraphone and percussion can form a jazz quartet with the harp and improvise together. 

In a manner comparable to Elzbieta Sikora's blue harp concertino "South Shore", Stina and Patrik leave many of the sound processing effects possible on the blue harp up to the performer.  Stina uses some delay combined with soft reverb, but other performers are free to choose something else. 

Quadro Nuevo - tango bitter sweet

The award-winning German quartet Quadro Nuevo normally consists of: Mulo Francel (saxophones, clarinets), Andreas Hinterseher (accordion, vibrandoneon, xylophone), D. D. Lowka (double bass, percussion), and Robert Wolf on the guitar.  However, poor Robert is convalescing from a car accident, and so is replaced for the current season by Evelyn Huber on the blue harp.  It is with Evelyn that Quadro Nuevo will make their London debut, on November 1st, 2009, in the Music Hall of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

The quartet will perform a show based on their latest CD, tango bitter sweet.  This album fuses world and Oriental music, jazz, cabaret, flamenco, valse musette, Balkan swing, and original songs with the passionate nostalgia of European tango.  The four musicians’ venues are as diverse as the roots of their music: they appear in concert halls and festivals all over the world, but also travel around the Southern Mediterranean as street musicians, enticing their audience to dance as a nightly tango band!

new works for harp and electronics

Jakez is used to my calling him and saying "you know you're coming to Munich from Beijing via Paris at the start of September?  Well, in London on the Thursday...".  Sadly, this time the travel gods were against us - but we are very grateful to Alex Rider for being our London correspondent, and sending me this review of Elizabeth's Scorah's recital of many new works for the blue harp.  

The Big Blue: New Works for Harp and Electronics: Elizabeth Scorah, Harp

September 10, 2009- Royal Academy of Music, London

As many harp students will know, there is a lot more to presenting a performance exam than a mere succession of pieces, arranged chronologically and delivered to a panel of passive, dehumanized adjudicators. Far from it; now there is much emphasis on having a concept, of making a presentation that will excite and entertain the intellect as well the ears. The idea of a ‘programme’ means that the pieces are given cohesion and context, things that breathe life not only into the audience experience but into the playing as well. The laterally thinking student might find also that the occasion is given a greater sense of meaning beyond the fulfillment of an academic requirement: the reward being a sense of a satisfaction equal to a ‘good mark’.

Currently studying for a Masters degree in performance at London’s Royal Academy of Music under Karen Vaughan, Elizabeth Scorah sought a way in which to enliven her exam performance Debussy’s Danses sacrée et profane and Ravel’s Introduction et Allegro. Ravel’s luscious septet and Debussy’s subtle concerto-type work are beautiful but undeniably often-heard exam fare, and today’s harp student can be hard put to set them in a rich new context. France’s illustrious history of harp-design seems to have provided the answer: it is well-known that the competing efforts of the houses of Erard and Pleyel resulted in the creation of these works and this gave Elizabeth an idea. Camac today continues this tradition of harp innovation, and the Big Blue electro-acoustic harp has become synonymous with the cutting-edge .  So, when Elizabeth approached Jakez Francois in hopes of using the Big Blue harp in her exam, the result was an ambitious and intriguing recital concept: one that juxtaposed traditional repertoire with several new and specially commissioned works for the blue harp.

NY.Xperienced - SONGS, London, September 24th 2009

Having been to watch Myriam Serfass performing on the blue harp with Dita von Teese in Paris, you can get on the Eurostar and go to London to hear Elisabeth Valletti's gig at the Hope and Anchor, 207 Upper Street, Islington N1, on September 24th at 9PM. 

Elisabeth will be playing her new show NY.Xperienced - SONGS, which I blogged about in July. 

NY.Xperienced_ SONGS_ Excerpts of the album-elisabeth valletti from elisabeth valletti on Vimeo.

blue harp goes burlesque

Camac's blue harp is on stage at the Casino de Paris with Dita von Teese! 

Myriam Serfass is Dita's harpist in the Gentry de Paris Revue.  The show is running until September 17th and you can book your ticket here.

Update:  review here!

Myriam and Dita