Harpblog

FIMU festival, Belfort

 

As well as the Celtic Days on Lake Constance, there is another harp festival happening at the end of May - this time in Belfort in France. The FIMU Festival (Festival International de Musique Universitaire) is in fact a general music festival, but it makes a special feature of honouring a particular instrument every time - which this year, is the harp!

FIMU's story is an amazing one, as I discovered when I called Director Richard Gorrieri. It began when students in Belfort wanted to have the university's work more internationally recognised, and to meet students from other countries. They decided music was the best medium in which to do this and began to organise a three-day festival every year. That might not sound so unusual, although student-organised events often impress just because they are organised by students. But the FIMU festival is huge. In just 3 days, over 240 concerts take place, with 130 different orchestral formations, and 1500 musicians from over 30 different countries. All the concerts are completely free, and draw an audience of 24 000 in total, or 8000 a day. 

As you can see from the harp programme, the festival offers concerts from world-class artists, who also offer their services entirely for free. The result is a massive, convivial community event focused around a common love of music, both within Belfort and from much further afield.

Celtic Days on Lake Constance

The Celtic Days on Lake Constance will take place in Rorschach, Switzerland between May 21st - 24th, 2009.  Now in its seventeenth year, this festival aims to bring the music of the Celtic lands (Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany) to both harpists and non-harpists alike.  Besides concerts and an exhibition, the courses this year cover jazz and Irish music on the lever harp, with Park Stickney and Catherine Rhatigan respectively. There is also a Celtic ensemble course for a wide variety of instruments, lessons in Irish set dancing, and you can also learn about the Irish bodhran drum and "gain a deeper understanding of Celtic music through rhythm."  

The festival is trilingual (in English, French and German), to make it accessible to as many people as possible. Artistic Director Kora Wuthier in fact began the festival when she returned from studying the Celtic harp abroad: "I felt that perhaps not everyone would speak enough English or French to be able to go and take part in courses in the Celtic lands, so I set up a festival that would also happen in German."

new string charts

Following requests from clients, we have created two tables showing the different types of strings used for Camac's different harp models.  These will help you order strings either via our head office in Mouzeil, or using our online boutique.

 

 

You can find these charts online here on the "technical manuals" page of our website, or download them below.

Download Pedal string chart

Download Lever string chart

Stolen harp

Sometimes when I ask for my harp to be stored somewhere secure at a gig the hall manager will say "well, who's going to steal a harp?"  They are wrong insofar as harps do get stolen, but right that stealing harps is a stupid thing to do.  They all have individual serial numbers, and the owners are recorded in harpmakers' and insurers' records.  And when one is stolen, the harp community (otherwise known as a powerful branch of the mafia) pulls together and publicizes the details as much as possible.    

Like now:  a Venus harp has been stolen in France.  It is a Venus Premier no.1210, 46 strings, black, with an extended, decorated soundboard.  It has a distinctive dent in the middle of the soundboard, which has been repaired inside the soundbox with bands of resin.  Please spread the news and let me know if you come across the harp, so I can contact its rightful owner.    

 

Carte blanche, May 9th - early music

May 9th's Sunday 'carte blanche' concert at L'Espace Camac (Paris) is all about early music.  We are delighted to welcome Veronique Musson-Gonneaud, Bruno Ortega and Françoise Johannel, who will present the following:  the day will begin at 10AM with a workshop until noon.  Veronique Musson-Gonneaud will suggest fingerings, phrasing, tools and techniques with which to approach the performance of early music, before Bruno Ortega works with course participants on solo and ensemble pieces.  After lunch, Françoise Johannel will provide an introduction to Renaissance improvising (using ostinati).  Veronique will give a concert/conference between 3:30 PM and 5, before Françoise and Bruno perform at 6.  

Speaking as someone whose idea of early music is Mozart, I have always been blown away by the early music workshops I've experienced, by the music's vitality and freedom, and by the new musical worlds its specialists reveal.  It promises to be a fascinating and wide-ranging day which, like all carte blanche events, is completely free of charge.  Please send your reservations for workshops and concerts to Mme Florence Ledi, f.ledi@camac-harps.com / +33 6 71 80 56 47.  As well as your contact details and the number of places requested, applications for the workshops should include the name of your professor, and whether you would like to play a pedal or a lever harp.

Rossitza Milevska

 

The Milevska Trio at the World Harp Congress, Amsterdam 2008

Speaking of jazz, another jazz harpist Camac loves is Rossitza Milevska.  Even "jazz harpist" is a bit of a misnomer because Rossitza actually does many types of music, such as classical, world, impro and pop.   Composer and singer as well as harpist, you can also read about Rossitza at www.popharp.com. 

Rossitza studied classical harp at the Sofia Conservatoire in her native Bulgaria, before postgraduate work with Elisabeth Fontan-Binoche in France.  Having played and recorded various piece of jazz/variety music since the age of fifteen, post-concert harp studies she decided to expand her grasp of jazz.   Like so many successful jazz harpists, Rossitza did this by studying with a jazz pianist: Robert Persi at the Conservatoire National de Region in Nice.  Rossitza also began lessons on the piano herself, but introduced the harp into their lessons more and more, adapting what she had learnt for the piano to the harp.  The process was a mixture of open-minded guidance from Persi, and personal experimentation. 

Although the harp's relatively atypical status in jazz presents its challenges, Rossitza points out that to be unusual is also an advantage:  "it was a pleasure to adapt and arrange standards for a new type of sound.  Especially coupled with singing, jazz harp makes for an original sound.  The development of the electric harp has also made it possible for the harp fully to participate in jazz bands - whereby it is necessary to have some idea about amplification to be able to profit from this instrument's great potential.  I also use the lever harp, which allows a different approach on-stage and a different rapport with the audience, because of its portability."

You can hear Rossitza within a variety of ensembles and musical genres.  "In Duo Eclectica (harp, piano and double vocals, with Peggy Polito), we are interested in all types of music, and are one of the rare ensembles to present classical, pop and jazz works within the same concert.  We also find it very important to arrange classical pieces that have never been played by harp and piano together, to develop this repertoire."  Another one of Rossitza's main groups is her jazz trio The Milevska Trio, with Frederick Lacroix and Cedric Le Donne, Your next chance to hear them live is on June 3rd at the Sentmenat International Harp Festival in Spain, and their music is a mixture of jazz standards - such as the YouTube clip below - and original compositions.  We're all looking forward to Rossitza's first album, which will be out before too long!        

      

The Milevska Trio cover Miles Davis's 'Human Nature'.

 

 

*New* jazz harp academy, September 2010

Sabine Meijers and Brenda Dor-Groot - that's the duo behind www.jazzharp.org, if you didn't already know - are launching their own jazz academy.  The three-day intensive course will take place between September the 17th and 19th, 2010, in the Netherlands, and boasts a star-studded faculty including harpists Edmar Castaneda and Park Stickney.  It will also be YET ANOTHER BRILLIANT CHANCE to meet Camac's MIDI harp!

Get in ahead with a pre-registration email to info@jazzharp.org:  all details are available here.

Applications open for the Norwegian National Youth Orchestra

 

Photo:  Sivelin Kjølstad

Applications are open to student harpists of all nationalities for the summer session of the Norwegian National Youth Orchestra.  The programme will include Schönberg's Pelleas & Melisande with four harps,  conducted by Marc Soustrot, and the harp tutor is Willy Postma.  Contact Astrid Bertelsen for more details:  astrid.bertelsen@nmh.no.   

The genuine article

Deborah Henson-Conant signs a DHC Blue Light harp.  I should admit that this isn't par for the course when you order a DHC BL, because our harps are made in France and Deborah lives in Boston, so even if flights were running it would be logistically kind of tricky.  But hey, that's even more motivation to take your harp to the party and catch one of Deborah's concerts.

(I voted for signing it all the way down the front of the column in massive, gold letters, which is what I'd want if I had a harp autographed by Deborah. But an advantage of this more discreet approach on the back is that you can see the handy velcro tuning key patch Deborah constructed so she can move around the stage with her harp without searching for the key en route.  Something else to consider when customising your own harp!  The DHC Blue Light only weighs five kilos, and is made for dancing).

Felix Godefroid Harp Competition

Full information for the Felix Godefroid Harp Competition is now online.  The contest will take place in Tournai, Belgium, on November 5th, 6th and 7th, 2010, and rules & repertoire can be found here. 

The competition is organised by Les Amis de la Harpe Mosane, of which Sophie Hallynck is president.  It's not only Godefroid who comes from the Mosan area of Belgium - check out this composers tree on the competition site, where you can see its importance in the history of the harp.