If you have visited www.camac-harps.com, you probably know that our website has a harp and cello arrangement of Fauré’s Après une rêve as its welcoming music. Much as we love this piece, it has been on the site for over three years, and it’s time for a change!
We would like to invite you to send us your own recordings. Each selected recording will then be featured on our site for one month, with links to the performer’s own site (or preferred publicity details). Every time the music changes, it will be announced on www.harpblog.info, together with an extensive presentation about the music and the artist performing it. We will also create a ‘Camac voices’ page, where recordings past and present are collected together, and where information, links and publicity can remain more permanently.
THE CHALLENGE IS: the music must be between fifty and sixty seconds long, and we would particularly welcome music you have created yourselves!
Here are the other conditions:
Music submitted should be free of rights, and come with a declaration giving us permission for us to broadcast it online.
Music can be any style and on any type of harp. From early to electric, folk to Latin: we will even enjoy listening to music that is not played on a Camac!
Music can be for solo harp, or any ensemble / group featuring harp as the main instrument.
Please submit recordings in whichever of these two ways is most convenient for you: via email to harpblog@camac-harps.com, or on a CD to the address below.
We are open to all ideas! We hope very much you will apply, and have fun doing so.
Camac Harps La Richerais BP 15 44850 Mouzeil France
February’s Camac Voice has been recorded by none other than the winner of November’s Cité des Arts competition: Maureen Thiébaut. It is the opening of the Sonata K208 by Scarlatti.
Maureen Thiébaut
Maureen Thiébaut began the harp in 1996. In 2005, she joined the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris (CRR), where she studied with Ghislaine Petit-Volta until 2009. Having received her Diplôme d'Etudes Musicales (DEM) with a "très bien" credit, she entered Isabelle Moretti's class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris (CNSMDP). A propos - the CRR is one of the harp world’s best-kept secrets. Its first undergraduate degree - the DEM that Maureen took - qualifies you to then take the entrance audition for the undergraduate course at the CNSMDP. This can be very handy to remember if you cannot immediately apply to the CNSM because you do not speak French, and / or haven’t done solfège: you have to pass exams in both before you may proceed to the harp audition. The results speak for themselves: of the seven candidates to make the CNSM audition’s final in 2010, five with Ghislaine’s students from the CRR. Harpblog has covered this subject before, in “Studying in...Paris”.
Back to Maureen: as well as winning first prize and the Louise Charpentier prize in the Cité des Arts of Paris competition in November 2011, Maureen also won third prize and the "coup de coeur" prize at the Martine Géliot International Competition in 2008. She is principal harpist with the Manifesto Orchestra, and has also worked with the Paris Opera (2011), the Orchestre des Siècles (2010), and the Orchestre Prométhée (2008). She performs regular solo recitals, and teaches at the Animathèque MJC in Sceaux.
The number of harp competitions has exploded in recent years, meaning that harp students prepare and focus on them more than ever before. As sponsors, we also attend more competitions than ever before, and - more than ever before - one notices the difference between candidates who have approached a competition wisely, and those who haven’t. But what is this “wisely”? Perceptively, Maureen points out that doing a competition is not like filling out a form, either correctly or incorrectly: “I would never presume to lecture harpists on how exactly to win a competition, because each person prepares in their own way, and has his own reasons for doing a competition.”
Despite the variety in individual competition preparation and reasons for doing it, nonetheless it is clear that you must prepare carefully, and you do have to have reasons. Fact: if you aren’t ready, you’ll not win a serious competition. Even if nobody else as good as you turns up, I’ve never met a harp jury that forgives insufficient preparation, and prizes can be and are withheld all the time. In an article by Adrienne Bridgewater in the January / February 2010 edition of Harp Column Magazine, her entire interviewed panel of competition winners emphasise their preparation: “Our panel said they began anywhere from as soon as the repertoire list was published to seven months before the competition. ‘At the last minute’ was not an answer we heard from the group.” Sam Karlinski, who writes a detailed and helpful blog about competition preparation, offers a year’s timeline in the same article. For the biggest competitions, the repertoire lists usually come out two years in advance, and there is a reason why they do.
If you cannot devote yourself to nothing but the competition in the two years running up to it, you can still approach the programme strategically. “I began immediately with Conte Fantastique, which I felt to be by far the most difficult work on the programme”, Maureen explains. “Beginning it so early allowed me to perform it on numerous occasions, in exams and concerts, and to gain experience with it. The previous year had been very hectic for me, with a lot of lessons, exams, and work at the Paris Opera. As a result, I couldn’t devote myself entirely to the competition until July, five months before. I then practised for about four hours a day, increasing the time as the date grew closer.”As well as preparation, Maureen stresses the importance of knowing why you are doing the competition. “As far as I’m concerned, the greatest lesson I retained from this preparation (one I am far from applying elsewhere as it is so difficult!) is that, paradoxically, the preparation of a competition requires great neutrality. You must not judge yourself during this period, not say “oh goodness, I’m so behind” or “I will never manage to learn this piece”, or even “great, that’ll play itself” (for all that positive thinking can be helpful!). For me, the two great questions to ask yourself are, during preparation, “why am I doing this competition”? and, one week before, “am I ready?”. If you have positive answers to both these questions, you should be able to walk onto the competition stage in a good frame of mind.
The rest of the time, you have to work, to be happy to be playing beautiful music, and to profit from this special time with your instrument. I have happy memories of the preparation, during which I learnt and discovered so much! This first prize is also thanks to the quality of the teaching I have at the CNSMDP, through the harp lessons from Isabelle Moretti and Geneviève Letang, and also the chamber music and musicianship classes. Also, when you prepare a competition, you spend a lot of time alone with your instrument. I came to know more about my desires in life, my strengths and weaknesses, which crystallised themselves through my intense tête à tête with my instrument. A competition is not only about steeling yourself for the fateful moment, although of course you need to get yourself in shape to cope with the stress on the day. Like everyone else, I had difficult times, where I felt discouraged, questioned and doubted myself. But the work is also full of beautiful things: tenderness, joy, even the love that goes into playing music.”
Maureen playing Caplet's 'Conte Fantastique' with the Quatuor Michalakakos, in the final of the Cité des Arts competition. Photo: Jean-Marc Volta
As part of her prize, Maureen will be playing a series of recitals in European countries, including Germany, Italy and Wales. Keep an eye on the Harpblog calendar for the details. I leave you with her recording of Fauré’s Impromptu, the compulsory work in the Cité des Arts competition first round, as well as the complete Scarlatti sonata.
January’s Camac voice is the exhilarating finale to a substantial work for harp quartet, commissioned and performed by the British ensemble 4 Girls 4 Harps. This work, ‘Saraswati’ by Edward Longstaff, is inspired by Saraswati the Hindu goddess of music (as well as of knowledge, art, science and technology). She is usually depicted with four arms, portrayed here by the four harp parts. For this recording, 4 Girls 4 Harps added a tabla line, from Sanju Sahai, to emphasise the work’s powerful rhythmic quality as well as its Indian influences.
Harpblog posted an article about 4G4H nearly two years ago, in February 2010. You can read about the group’s beginnings here. As they have scaled the ranks from student quartet to a highly polished professional ensemble, they have remained true to their wish significantly to expand the harp quartet repertoire - also for other harpists.
December’s Camac Voice is a lively piece of Celtic music. It is from a French artist whose roots are in Breton traditional music, but who in fact has become one of the most eclectic harpists we know of today. Nikolaz Cadoret began his harp studies on the lever harp, in Dominig Bouchaud’s famous harp class in Quimper, Brittany. A standard course of events would be either to use the lever harp as a stepping-stone to the pedal harp, or to become a lever harp specialist. Nicolaz, however, plays both instruments professionally - and that's not all: he also plays jazz, electronic music, and does a lot of experimental, improvisatory multimedia.
Two hornpipes: The Kildare Fancy and The Rights of Man
Nikolaz was the winner of the Camac Trophy at the distinguished Festival Interceltique de Lorient in 2010; a prizewinner at the Kan Ar Bobl Celtic competition; and has appeared as a soloist on top Celtic stages like the Rencontres Internationales de Harpe de Dinan, and the famous Breton dance gatherings "Fest-Noz". At the same time, Nikolaz pursued classical harp studies, firstly with Evelyne Gaspart in Rennes, then with Catherine Michel in Zurich and Xavier de Maistre in Hamburg. In the pedal harp field, he has won prizes at theUSA International Harp Competition, Bloomington, the Reinl Wettbewerb in Vienna, and holds the Prix Philippe Chaignat from the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad. He has held the Principal Harp position of both the Sinfonieorchester Aachen and the Komische Oper, Berlin, and regularly works with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Deutsches Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, and even as far afield as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
"I didn’t deliberately set out to become a harpist of many diverse styles", Nikolaz explains. "It happened by chance, because I began on the lever harp in Dominig’s class, and that’s not a class that just uses the lever harp as a beginning instrument before moving on to the pedal harp. So a serious approach to traditional music was instilled in me from an early age. I just knew I wanted to play the harp, and to express myself through the harp. If I need a classical instrument to say what I want to say, then I will go to the pedal harp; if I want to improvise, then I will do that; if I want to explore amplified music, then I will go to my blue harp.
Obviously, different styles of music nourish and inform each other. Your approach to all aspects of music – melody, harmony, rhythm, structure, how you approach a performance on-stage – everything is coloured by your fundamental training. It is like a painter who chooses to express himself in abstract forms, but knows how to draw precisely from life. His classical study informs his abstract work.
One example most harpists can relate to is the issue of improvisation versus the classical approach, which is more recreative than creative. I have a great respect for the classical devotion to a score, its wish to replicate the composer’s wishes as exactly as possible. But you will find many classical musicians, if they devote themselves exclusively to this, feel extremely uncomfortable attempting any sort of music that does not have a score to follow. To me, this state of affairs is actually a distortion of so-called "written music": up to the beginning of the twentieth century, the score was more a "grid" around which you were allowed and even encouraged to improvise! You can make music however you like, but perhaps your course should not end up actively blocking you from exploring any other types of music.
I see any performance as an event, your own event. Audiences don’t – outside the realms of competitions, which to an extent are artificial situations – come to hear a perfect rendition of a piece; they come to experience the event that you, the artist, creates. This feeling is self-evident for musicians who improvise, because you don’t know what is going to happen in advance – it has to be your event, what you decide to play is the entire sum of the event, not a score. Of course, when you play classical music, the score is an essential part of it. But you still, as a performer, need to be totally present yourself, and I find my experience with improvisation very helpful in reminding me of this.
One of my recent projects is an artists’ collective, Polop. It began with my brother-in-law, who is a photographer specialising in construction sites. One night we were sitting in a bar, and he said that he would like to branch out and do something with musicians, and I was interested right away. I went with him to see a construction site in the north of Paris, and I was bowled over by what I felt to be the sonic power of the place.
Above: 55-minute improvisation in the basement of a construction site
Photo: Alexandre Soria
I wanted to work on something that explored relationships between not just different styles of music, but different art forms altogether. Little by little, Collectif Polop grew, and nowmixes different musicians with videography, photography, sound engineering, etc. Our objective is always to bring different media together, so we always combine at least two art forms. I am trying to find the music in, for example, images, or video, or photography or dance. It’s like a big laboratory of different artists, all participating in work about – well, about freedom!
Another substantial project I’m working on at the moment is my harp duo with my wife, Alice Soria-Cadoret. We’re planning two tours for the next two seasons (2012-2013 and 2013-14), and both shows will present a panorama of Celtic harp music arranged for two harps - including its very diverse history. We’re going to perform these shows on electric lever harps. There is absolutely no reason why traditional music should always be performed on traditional instruments. By definition, traditional music has always soaked up the music and culture(s) in which it finds itself – which is why you get Celtic rock, or jazz/world fusion.
In music, or in art generally, I see no reason why you shouldn't do what you like, so long as you do it intelligently. If it wasn't intelligent it wouldn't be art, and different genres help us to explore art intelligently by teaching us things, by training us. But art is also about self-expression, and it's up to the artist to use his foundations to set himself free."
You can keep up with Nikolaz’s work on his excellent blog, as well as on MySpace.
It may be cold and wintery here in Europe, but the musicians of November's Camac Voice must be feeling warmer, as they're in the middle of summer in Australia! The clip you can now hear on www.camac-harps.com is from 'An Andro' on Christine Morphet and Pete Franche's debut CD, Telenn Tri. Bringing the wheel full circle back to where, as it happens, Camac Harps are based, An Andro is inspired by the andro dance from Breton folk music.
Pete: "We first met when Christine brought her harp to an Irish pub session that I help to run. I play the piano accordion as well as guitar and bouzouki, so I suppose we were an unlikely combination. The harp is not a common instrument in Australia, so to many people the perception of a harp is that of a pretty, rather inoffensive instrument you see occasionally hear playing glissandos in orchestral pieces! So it was a pleasant surprise to hear the harp being used as a lead melody instrument in the Celtic tradition."
Christine: "I learnt the harp as a teenager when I changed piano teachers, and my new teacher had a pedal harp in her teaching room! I then persuaded my parents to purchase my first lever harp and continued with both piano and harp lessons. Unfortunately after five years of learning classical harp, I gave up music and focused on work.
Twenty years later, I rediscovered my love of the harp, and also discovered Celtic music for the first time. I went to an Irish pub session with my harp as I'd learnt a few Celtic tunes and wanted somewhere to play them. I found the session very welcoming, especially as no-one there had seen a 'real live harp' before.
As Telenn Tri, we first performed together at a Medieval fair in South Australia. From that initial performance we have been asked to play at various costumed events, including a wedding in the caves at Naracoorte. Over the last four years we have performed at many Australian festivals including the National Celtic Festival, Pt Fairy Festival, and we are looking forward to playing at the Australian Celtic Festival in New South Wales next year. Over time we have developed a varied repertoire of traditional and contemporary music, and we are always looking for something new to play.
I attended the Dinan harp festival this year in workshops with Myrdhin and Dominig Bouchaud which I found very inspirational! This has given us more ideas and material to add to our concerts and forthcoming CDs.
On our current CD, which we released earlier this year, An Andro (a Breton dance) doesn't appear to have any other name. I picked up the tune from the inaugural New Zealand Harp Festival in Wellington, and it became a requested tune at the sessions. Over time this tune has grown into its current form, which is much faster and more driving than how a traditional Andro would be played.
For a long time people have asked us for recordings of our music, and eventually this year we managed it. All the instruments are played by us, with my niece designing the artwork, and all recording and sound engineering was completed by Pete."
October’s Camac Voice features a piece of Swedish folk music – Stina Hellberg’s modern rendition of a melody that is over one hundred years’ old. It’s uncommon to hear it on the harp, at least, harp as we understand the term. “The original version of this song is for the Swedish key harp”, Stina explains. “which is an instrument actually closer-related to the violin than the harp. If you tell people in Sweden you play the harp, they tend to assume you mean the key harp, or key fiddle as it is also known.”
Swedish nyckelharpa (key harp) built by Eric Sahlström. Photo: Karsten Evers
Compared with Sweden’s lively folk music scene, its concert harp world is small, especially outside Stockholm. But Stina Hellberg is working to change this. She currently teaches the biggest harp class in Sweden at the Uppsala Music School, continuing the sterling work of Gertrud Schneider, who was also Stina’s first teacher. It was Gertrud who built up the class and even persuaded the school to buy twenty lever harps for pupils to learn on.
Stina is also the only harpist in Scandanavia to hold a degree in jazz, from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. She is currently finishing her jazz masters at the same institution, and also studied in Felice Pomeranz’s famous harp class at Berklee College of Music, Boston. Like most jazz harpists, she has a classical training too, currently with Lisa Viguer, and previously at London’s Trinity College of Music. And like most jazz harpists, she has not studied exclusively with harpists, but with other musicians too: Ove Lundin (piano), Mattias Windemo and David Fiuczynski (guitar), Gösta Rundqvist (piano), Örjan Hulten (saxophone), Dave Samuels (vibraphone), Bruno Råberg (double bass) and Fernando Brandau (flute).
“I’m currently working on my first CD, which should be released next May. It is a crossover project fusing classical and jazz. I’m using the classical “Debussy” trio of flute, viola and harp, plus a jazz quartet of harp, guitar, bass and drums, to create music for this ensemble that explores the grey area between written and improvised music. Most of the written-out music is for the classical musicians, of course, although we also have a steady gig at a casino right now, where I force them to improvise a little on the show tunes and jazz standards that we play there. The jazz half of the ensemble get mostly chord changes, so they feel free.
I’ve got into crossover partly because of people – having met some amazing musicians, I wanted to play with them, and some are classical and some play jazz. I realised that even if I don’t want to call myself a classical harpist, I’m not a bebop player either. I always end up coming back to classical music, approaching it from an improviser’s point of view - the lines, the chords, the rhythm. Jazz-folk fusion music is very popular in Sweden, but you don’t often find jazz-classical crossover. But the harp is very well suited to this genre, so I thought: why not?
The Swedish jazz scene leans quite heavily towards free jazz and jazz fusion, generally. Another project of mine is my group City 17. This is much more a grunge jazz group, exploiting my electric harp’s potential for sound effects, like distortion. You could say it’s about as dirty as a harp can get…
Gertrud Schneider used to organise the Swedish Harp Days together with Camac, and I took over the organisation when she retired a couple of years ago. Two years ago, the days didn’t happen because of the volcanic eruptions that grounded everybody’s flights. But the harps had already arrived, and people had travelled from far and wide to buy them. So I sold them, with Eric Piron on the phone from where he was marooned in Spain!
I am so extremely happy with my three Camac harps. I have had a blue harp for some years now, plus a Mélusine de concert, and I recently also bought an Atlantide Prestige. For a long time, I only had the one blue electroacoustic harp. Its acoustic sound is really great, and the sound clip you hear on the Camac homepage was done on my unamplified blue harp. So there was no urgency to also get a concert harp, although I did buy an Atlantide too once I could afford it - as Jakez says, the acoustic sound of the blue harp is equivalent to a good, but not a great concert harp.
Camac sent an Atlantide to me in Sweden to try. I was blown away by the harp they had picked out: I knew I had to have it. And my blue harp sounds better still, after it received the latest type of service Camac have developed. I don’t think I will need to buy another harp for quite a while – which in a way, I’m quite sad about!"
Another CD prominently featuring Stina’s harp-playing and a stellar line-up of some of Sweden’s top jazz musicians, has just been released. It is Per Tjernberg’s Music is my Salvation, available here.
What better way to begin the new season than with a new Camac Voice providing the opening music to our commercial site, www.camac-harps.com! Elisabeth Valletti is one of the harp world’s most interesting avantgarde artists. By the early eighties, her creative path had lead her from classical studies in France, via rock and roll and jazz in the United States, to being signed by Chris Blackwell (Bob Marley’s producer) in London. Elisabeth’s resulting album, Innocenti, was described by Brian Eno as “one of the best-produced things I’ve heard in years.” Read Harpblog’s earlier portrait of Elisabeth here.
In April 2011, Camac’s MIDI concert harp was awarded the Qwartz Max Matthews Prize for technological innovation. Elisabeth was instrumental in drawing the Qwartz Awards’ attention to the MIDI harp, and she composed and premiered her ‘Harp Haikus’ for MIDI harp at the prizegiving ceremony. September's Camac Voice is an excerpt from the HarpHaikus - 'The Mosquito'.
A mosquito
Flies down my throat
Buzzing
All three Harp Haikus performed at the Qwartz Awards – The Cat, The Mosquito and The Gargoyle – are inspired by haikus written by the nineteenth-century Japanese poet Issa Kobayashi.
“I have composed avant-garde music for the blue harp for many years, but this was my first work for MIDI harp”, explains Elisabeth. “When I started working with the MIDI Harp, I was thankful to have Arnaud Roy introduce me to the instrument. I began work using the Pro Tools software, and am now adding Max/MSP. To create my basic sound palette, I uploaded sounds I had processed over the course of my long work - ever since the eighties - with electric harps, FX machines and computers. Ninety percent of the sounds you hear in my pieces – whether they sound like percussion, wind or any other type of "weird" sounds – are processed sounds that originate from a harp sound. The other ten percent are conventional instruments (violins, horns) and a few vocal samples, I selected a range of sounds for each haiku that fit my idea of the piece.
“I have always been fascinated by science and I have been imagining the world of microcosmic sounds for years. Much interested in the studies about the workings of the brain, I contemplated the sounds created by the chemical and bio-electrical events in the brain when living through intense happenings which alter the conscience - like a car accident, a mystical experience, love at first sight, a poetic revelation, or a mathematical realisation. What attracted me about haikus was that they depict minute, precise moments of time. ‘The Mosquito’, for example, pinpoints the second where you realize a mosquito has flown down your throat and is still buzzing. Roland Barthe writes: “The haiku is a scratch of light, a scar into reality, engraved in time.” I fantasized time stretching, expanding through the brain sonic jungle, at the moment of the “ scratch of light, the scar into reality”. I looked inside the poet's neuronal microcosm. I listened to the storms firing into the interstices between the dendrites and the axons, riding on the neurotransmitters, escaping into the synaptic clefts. I dived deeper into the universe of the dancing/crashingquantic particles/waves.
Here is a video of 'The Cat':
Foolish cat tied up
Still crying
For love
And, 'The Gargoyle':
Like he is biting
The cold moon
The gargoyle
I have been dreaming of a MIDI concert harp since 1986 – recently I found the letter I wrote to Joël Garnier at the time, asking him to make one. I had already worked with and composed a work for Joël’s harpe à memoire, which I presented to Pierre Boulez at theIRCAM that same year. While Boulez was enthusiastic, the harpe à memoire was destined to remain a prototype: it was just too expensive to develop further then. But of course, MIDI instruments already existed, and I knew that Jakez, still very young, was already dreaming of a MIDI harp too. After all the investment and years of research that went into the MIDI harp’s creation, it was a great day when I heard he’d finally done it.
I do understand why Camac has decided not to release the instrument commercially for the time being. It’s important not to underestimate the amount of music technology know-how you need to get the most out of the harp. Arnaud Roy is a professional sound engineer, and although I had worked with electric harps and computers for a long time I found myself up at three o’clock in the morning figuring out solutions to all sorts of issues that only come into play when you start working with MIDI, rather than just amplification and non-MIDI sound processing. It is also very helpful if you are in a position to correct the bugs that crop up too. Most of the bugs will have been generated by yourself as you work – bug-creating and fixing is a normal feature of music technology.
The sound parameters are also quite unstable due to the harp’s open vibrations and specific playing technique. This volatility is very challenging when playing very exactly notated pieces – as in the case of the Harp Haikus. It can be an exciting plus when performing pieces involving improvisation, which is also an important part of my work.
I have been exploring the potential of harp sound for over twenty-five years. I like the idea of pushing the boundaries of the harp, of multiplying the richness of its musical spectrum and modifying its acoustics to create totally new sounds, of overturning romantic conceptions of what a harp should sound like. The MIDI harp throws open intoxicatingly wide doors for a sonic artist. To answer the fundamental question “but what can we do with this harp that cannot be done by a MIDI keyboard, cheaper and more easily?”, I would stress that thanks to the Camac MIDI software whose features are in perfect adequacy with the instrument, the harp-specific playing technique (glissandi ,harmonics, and the strings one can pluck, bend, shake, strike, caress, and muffle) can create sonic matter un-doable on a keyboard.
Of course, harp-specific sounds are not the only way by which you can justify the MIDI harp. Graham Fitkin took an entirely different approach in his “No Doubt” Concerto for MIDI Harp and Orchestra, working with vocal samples. But again, that piece works because it really draws attention to the fact a harp is playing, and creates surprise, even shock, that it sounds as it does. A feeling of great power emanates from the harp – the loud volume, the political anger, the huge orchestra above which the harp can be heard as clear as day – all things the listener does not expect from a harp concerto.
For all these reasons, I definitely think that the MIDI harp is a very specific instrument.”
July’s Camac Voice comes – like our voice for June, Hero Melia – from Wales. Amanda Whiting is, to quote Jakez, “one of the best jazz harpists I know”, and those of you who were at the Wales International Harp Festival in Caernarfon in 2010 will remember her performance as a harp-playing mad scientist together with Deborah Henson-Conant, in Deborah's new work, 'Danger Zone'.
Left: in Caernarfon.
Amanda is a brilliant example of a harpist who has developed a sparkling career by starting with ordinary gigs, and doing them extremely well. “I’ve always played the harp, but it started as just a hobby, going through grade exams at school and getting told off for not practising by my first teacher, Gillian Greene. It was when I went to music school (Amanda was the first harpist to win a specialist musician scholarship to Wells Cathedral School) where she studied with Ann Griffiths) that I realised this was what I wanted to do with my life, and I started practising for six hours a day.
Although I was playing exlusively classical music at that time, I’d had a jazz “Eureka moment” very early on, when I was about eight years old. I went to see a leather-clad Deborah Henson-Conant perform at the World Harp Festival in Cardiff. I don’t know whether it was her dreadlocks, her fishnet tights or just the way she rocked, but the experience never left me!
As I got older, I started working as a gigging harpist. My first gig was when I was fourteen, in a local hotel. I remember it vividly, it was three hours of hell! I didn't have enough music and I thought the evening was never going to end. But soon I realised that I could play whatever I wanted, including pop tunes – the audience reacted better to them than to all my “normal” harp repertoire. When I finished my studies with Caryl Thomas at Cardiff University in 1998, I travelled around the world playing on a cruise ship, and then fell into the residency I still have at the Celtic Manor. Celtic Manor is, among other things, the Ryder Cup venue, and as I play there every Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, it has brought me into contact with many big names."
You never know who you might meet at a gig.
"For example, I ended up being the support act for Jamie Cullum at a fundraising event at Celtic Manor. That’s hardly an offer you can turn down, for all it was terrifying because I only had a few weeks to get a two-and-a-half hour jazz set together with a bass and drums (the O'Connor brothers)!
As it happened, on the evening we supported Jamie, Dannii Minogue was in the audience. I almost fainted when, the next day, I was out for dinner with a friend, my phone rang, and it was Dannii on the line, in person…she was so kind, genuinely lovely. We stayed in touch, and I even went to visit her granny, as her family is from South Wales and it turned out her gran grew up with mine…
It was a few years later that I had another phone call, asking me to arrange and record a Christmas song with her in London. Her producer wasn't sure of the key, so I arranged three versions for harp, bass and drums and arrived at the studios in London, scared but excited, to find Dannii, James Blunt’s drummer Al Mobbs and the bassist with the Gorrillaz, Karl Brazil…can you imagine? It was incredible!
Celtic Manor has offered many great experiences. The Radio Two broadcaster Chris Evans often stays at the hotel and always passes by smiling and saying hello. Recently, I was driving up to London to play in the department store John Lewis, for St David's Day. Chris was on the radio talking about the Ryder Cup, and the harpist at the Celtic Manor, so obviously I was grinning in my car as I drove along. Then the phone rang...it was Radio Two, asking me if I would like to be Chris's mystery guest the following day.
It’s amazing who you come across and what you get asked to do, if you’re playing in the right place at the right time. I’ve worked at superb venues, with wonderful musicians, and had a great time. Being asked to work with Deborah was definitely a real highlight. I first saw her when I was a little girl and then, over twenty years later, I actually found myself on stage with her. That was an emotional experience for me, and it’s something I will always cherish.
For the last four years or so, I have also been hugely influenced by Park Stickney. He is a legend! I went to watch him play in Cardiff and honestly couldn't work out how he was doing what he was doing. My first lesson with him left me feeling like I did at Grade 1. It was back to the drawing board and there was no way forward without a lot of hard work and plenty of practise. I took jazz theory lessons and sat at home pulling my hair out. I was also lucky enough to meet a jazz trumpeter whilst out gigging, who – coincidentally – had been looking for a jazz harpist! Every fortnight, Chris would drive 1.5 hours to come and play and help me with the new language. This soon attracted Donny on bass, and our trio Zwzaz was born. We do all sorts of gigs, from TV appearances to clubs where only a handful of people turn up, to be honest…you never know what’s going to happen at a gig.”
You can read more about what Amanda gets up to on her blog, accessed via her website. She is also gives many performances for charity, particularly with the ‘Lost Chord’ scheme that puts on concerts for people with dementia. She is also currently working on chill-out music, and some projects with a DJ introduced to her by Dannii Minogue. Watch this space...
It's time for the next in our series of Camac Voices. Our commercial site www.camac-harps.com has some welcoming music, which used to be a harp and cello Fauré clip. This year it dawned on us that we didn't always have to have the same music. We are constantly being sent and hearing of so many intrieging, original, creative, fantastic harp recordings that we thought we'd try inviting you to send us clips of your music, to become a "Camac Voice".
The response has been great - please keep sending us clips, don't stop the music! Details of how to apply can be found here, at the top of Harpblog's designated Camac Voices page.
June's Camac Voice is our youngest entrant so far: Hero Melia, with an extract from her own song 'Swept Away'. Hero's remarkable talents as a harpist, singer and songwriter to boot have already attracted considerable recognition through Sky TV's competition, Must Be The Music. Only eleven at the time, Hero reached the grand final of this national contest designed as a 'Britain's got Talent' for serious musicians, and played Wembley in front of thirteen thousand people. Following her television success, 'Swept Away' reached number five in the UK Indie charts.
It's easy to get carried away by the media frenzy that follows a high-profile competition like this, so I was impressed to hear Hero tell me that she turned down all the record deals that followed. "I don't want to rush into anything. I'm very young and I do lots of other things as well as songwriting, I ride, I go kyaking, bungee jumping...I want time to work on my songs and think about what I want to do next."
Hero began playing the harp, as is common in her native Wales, in a group class at school (there's an inspiration to all other schools out there! Harp lessons for all!). Her teacher spotted her talent and suggested she move on to private individual lessons. Her progress was rapid - she's now been playing the harp for four years - and she earned enough money busking to record her first CD of her own songs.
However, even Hero's talents couldn't raise enough from busking alone for something that is just as important as a CD, but costs ten times as much...her own pedal harp. She entered the Must Be The Music competition for this reason - not worldwide fame, not a rapid, shiny record deal, but for the prize money, which would have paid for a harp. So it was a blow in an entirely pragmatic sense when she was narrowly pipped to the post for the first prize. Moreover, anyone who's ever done a competition will sigh in sympathy over the fact that, for the final, the judges told her to change her song choice...and then said in the ajudication they hadn't really liked her song choice. "I realise", says Hero, "that that was at least a good lesson in the need to take competitions with a pinch of salt. But it was still really annoying that I couldn't buy the harp."
A few weeks after the Must Be the Music final, Hero's phone rang. It was John Hoare at Pilgrim Harps, who had seen Hero on TV. And in proof of the adage - old, but true - that regardless of a competition jury's whimsy the good will out in the end, John told Hero he wanted to give her a harp. "So I went to visit them at the factory, told them what I wanted...and they made it for me!". For all this is the Camac blog, everyone agrees that was a lovely thing for John to have done!
Now equipped with her own pedal harp, Hero has a busy life fitting in her gigs and music lessons with school and her other activities. We'll be keeping an eager eye on her!
This article is about a real original in the harp world, so yet again I will demonstrate that three years of redactorial education were possibly largely wasted, and begin with a honking cliché. It's a small world. Because (you shouldn't begin sentences with "because" either), the week before I rang our second "Camac Voice", Michelle Sell, my husband had just bought all of Frank Sinatra's recordings with Count Basie and his big band, and I'd been listening to nothing else all week.
When Michelle was in her early twenties, she was Frank Sinatra's harpist at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. She began as part of the full orchestra accompanying Sinatra, as many harpists have done. But after Michelle’s first year of playing for Sinatra at Caesar’s, Sinatra got rid of the strings and used only big band, plus harp. Michelle - the sole woman in the band by this time - played all the string parts on the harp, and was brought up for a solo bow by Sinatra at the end of every night. All in all, it was an inspiring and formative experience for the young harpist, who went on to become San Francisco's first-call theatre and touring Broadway show harpist for what is now over thirty years.
"I'm not sure if it is widely-known among young harpists today how beautiful classic show writing for harp is", Michelle told me. "The great musicals such as Carousel and South Pacific are like harp concerti. However, in most current touring Broadway productions, the harp is also usually the first instrument to be removed from the band and replaced by a sampler. This is partly because touring shows fear they won't be able to get a local harpist who can play the part, partly for convenience in small local orchestra pits, and mostly - as ever - to save money. Artistically, none of these reasons are good ones, and the musicians' unions need to ask themselves why they have let this happen! The music industry has changed so much with the advent of samplers and virtual orchestras. The responsibility of re-inventing oneself, as a musician, falls to those clever and successful musicians that can evolve and find a new part of the market to serve. Look at Handel writing multi-purpose concertos suitable for various different solo instruments. Beyond the fact that the virtual orchestra and samplers are rapidly putting theatre musicians out of work, a musical's live orchestra is a totally different artistic experience. Recently I played for an award-winning revival of South Pacific that began in San Francisco. To my amazement and delight, they wanted and toured with a real live harpist. Perhaps the production won the Tony Award for Best Musical of 2008 because it was so true to the musical's classic identity. We also began the tour for Wicked, here in San Francisco, before it opened on Broadway. I took both my Lyon-Healy 22 and my Camac Clio to rehearsals so that the composer and musical director could choose what sound they wanted. They feel in love with my Camac Clio and the sound engineer was delighted because EVERY note could be heard in the theater due to my Clio’s electro-acoustic capabilities! The composer, Stephen Schwartz said to me one day during rehearsals, “Michelle, do you mind if I make the harp the most important instrument in the show?”
Michelle is also a composer, both in her own right and for the music-for-media company, Omni Music. She is an active teacher, and a prolific recording artist. She has even developed a healing treatment she has named "sonic therapy". The music you can now hear on www.camac-harps.com is an extract from one of her own compositions, 'Pieces of Glass'. It was originally written to contribute to an album about healing, and is about how we are all fragile in one way or another - "so we should be gentle with one another since we are all “breakable”, as Michelle says.
'Pieces of Glass' is recorded on Michelle's electroacoustic Camac Clio. "My Clio inspires me to write. I can connect it to my computer and record ideas, then edit them using Garageband. That's how I edited the Camac Voice clip, for example. I also use the harp sometimes as part of my sonic therapy. For this therapy, I have a massage table set up with two transducers under it, making the table vibrate as you lie on it. You put on headphones and a pair of dark glasses, both of which are pulsing frequencies. Often I connect the harp up to the table so its vibrations come through as well. “It may sound very “new age”, but it is very powerful healing. The vibrations are deeply relaxing."
Even if you are neither a composer nor a therapist, there is another straightforward reason to consider an electroacoustic harp. As Michelle says on her website, "for outdoor weddings & other private or public engagements, I frequently use a Camac electroacoustic harp. Every string on this harp has a pickup or small microphone. This allows the harp to be heard clearly in venues seating 500 people or, in contrast, at venues with just a few people. It can he heard as an intimate background instrument. At large venues and at outdoor functions, a traditional acoustic harp may be difficult to hear if not amplified. I believe that my clients are entitled to professionalism, punctuality, courtesy, and above all, the ability to hear the music for which they are paying." To roll out another cliché - but clichés only become so because they are true - you can't say fairer than that.
The first new music currently playing on camac-harps.com is performed by harpist Maura Valenti. Part of a work by Adrian Knight for harp and electronics. In seven parts, the excerpt you can hear on the Camac site is called 'the tears', and is based on a Dowland song. We love it. Its delicate, understated contemporary sound also surprised us and made us realise we'd rather assumed we'd get sent more jazz or pop numbers than anything else. Maura also paid for the commission in Cuban cigars, although I suppose that detail is not strictly relevant.
As a chamber musician, she has performed with Itzhak Perlman and members of the Perlman Music Program, mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, jazz clarinetist and composer Don Byron, as well as countless talented musicians from her generation through her experience as a student at Yale, Juilliard, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival. A recent collaboration with trombonist Achilles Liarmakopoulos is included on the Naxos album "Tango Distinto", and you can also hear her on Nathan Johnson’s soundtrack for the independent French film "Et soudain, tout le monde me manque." Of a solo performance in Alice Tully Hall, one critic wrote: “Maura Valenti performed Tailleferre's Harp Sonata brilliantly, not just with impressive technique but also with just the right touch of Gallic ebullience.” Most recently, she was a semi-finalist in the 2010 Netherlands International Harp Competition.
One of only five graduating students to receive the Juilliard's Scholastic Distinction that year, Maura did so by means of a paper called "Rock Music’s Social Conscience: Exploring the Idea of Political Music from the Sixties through the Post-9/11 Era." She has a broad interest in new music, both as a performer and through her work on Yale School of Music's Oral History of American Music, where she conducts and records interviews with living American composers for the institute's prestigious archive.
Another track from Maura we've been enjoying is this harp-steel pan-reggae ballad by another Yale musician and composer, Andy Akiho. Andy's ensemble started as himself on percussion in duo with bassist Sam Adams, playing in a Japanese restaurant. The group grew to include Maura and a string quartet, all playing (with some more chairs pushed back) in the restaurant. Now Andy has released his debut album on Innova Records, "No One To Know One". You can download a PDF of information about the album, along with the harp Murasaki-Purple track by way of a sneak preview below.
