Harpblog

Edmar Castaneda's new album: Double Portion

 

Elisabeth Valletti nominated for Eighth Qwartz Awards

Last year, Camac's MIDI harp won the Max Matthews Prize for technological innovation at the seventh Qwartz Awards in Paris. Now Elisabeth Valletti, who performed on the MIDI harp at the prizegiving ceremony, is in the running for the eighth Awards (musical experimentation category)! She has been nominated for her eighteen "Exercices pour la Harpe MIDI", which include the Harp Haikus she performed when the MIDI harp won its prize.

VERY IMPORTANT: this prize has a public vote, which you can cast here. The closing date for voting is February 15th.

 

Camac Voice, February 2012: Maureen Thiébaut

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.

 

Concerts with Hélène Breschand

Speaking of avant-garde harp music: I've just added some concert dates with Hélène Breschand to the Harpblog calendar. If you haven't heard of Hélène's work, you can read an article about her in the Autumn 2008 edition of Harpseasons. You can also browse her website, and that of her ensemble Laborinthus. 

 

Sébastien Ronceray Hélène Breschand Sensitive#18... from NoMoreReturn 

 

 

Elaine Radigue, Rhodri Davies and John Butcher - Brussels, 23.02.12

Rhodri Davies is performing the distinguished avant-garde composer Elaine Radigue's Occam I for solo harp on February 23rd at Beursschouwburg in Brussels (8:30 PM). Saxophonist John Butcher will then perform his own solo work, The Geometry of Sentiment, before he and Rhodri conclude the evening with a duo improvisation. For more details, click here.

Rhodri gave the world premiere of Radigue's composition in the summer of last year, at the Spitalfields Festival in London. One reviewer writes: "His journey up the harp, sounding out octaves, fifths and minor seconds with his two bows, unchained the hidden harmonics of these notes, the upper partials, and allowed them to engage in a most mesmerising celestial dance above our heads, a sort of musical aurora borealis..." .

Rhodri Davies. Photo: Alexis O'Hara

Marcella Carboni and Elisabetta Antonini: Nuance

 

 

Marcella Carboni and Elisabetta Antonini have released a great new harp + vocals album, in jazz style: 'Nuance'. Find out more in their press release, below!

Beautiful Season's Greetings from Cristina Braga and Ricardo Medeiros

Cristina Braga and Ricardo Medeiros have just recorded this Led Zeppelin cover in the Sacra Familia region of the coffee valley in the Rio mountains - "to celebrate hope and the New Year", as Cristina writes. The lyrics to the last verse are:

And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter

A hundred harps for Christmas Eve in Taipei!

Jakez is off on a regulation tour to Taiwan this week. I've got a feeling he's going to be pretty busy, because he is going shortly before an amazing harp marathon is due to take place. If he's going to be regulating even half the harps that are travelling to Taipei City to take part in the marathon, he'll have his hands full.

 

Jakez'll be on his own in Taiwan, as Liza Jensen's not going

The harp marathon has been organised by Shannon Chieh, principal harpist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, and her colleagues at the Taiwan Harp Association Meng-Lu Chiu, Shu-Hsin Chen, Chia-Yuan Liang, Chi-Mei Hung and Yi-Wen Kuang. The marathon will begin at 2PM on Christmas Eve in the Grand Lobby of Taipei Central Station, and consist of a continuous programme of various harp-related performances right up until midnight. The marathon's grand finale will be a massive ensemble of one hundred harps, performing three suites specially-written for the occasion: a Christmas medley, a Taiwanese folksong suite, and a Taiwanese aboriginal suite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shannon Cheih

"We had been planning this event for some time", Shannon told me last week on the phone, "but we reached a sticking-point because we couldn't find a venue big enough for an ensemble of one hundred harps. Being offered the station's Grand Lobby was a stroke of luck - it's huge, and over five hundred thousand people will probably pass by our show. Also, the station wanted the event to go on for as long as possible on one day. While we had originally conceived of a three-day event, we therefore changed this to one big non-stop marathon! 

We'll begin with as many different harp performances as we can - harp solo, harp chamber music, harp ensembles of various sizes and ages, and also harpists with special additional talents - like singing, performing magic tricks, and even tango dancing. Everyone who has already performed will join in with the grand finale. 

Prior to the harp marathon, Jakez will be the special guest at our press conference for the event. This will be on December 15th, at 2:30pm in the Tapei station Grand Lobby. Jakez will perform during the press conference, and follow this with a jazz workshop at 5PM, in the conference room at the station."

 

New harp and viola repertoire with Duo Esprit

It was nice to hear a different harp+ensemble piece (Caplet's Conte Fantastique) at the Concours Cité des Arts. The choice of the final round concerto is always tricky, as on the one hand you want to set something candidates will then be able to use often; on the other, you want to spare the jury from death by Debussy, and even broaden everyone's artistic horizons.

One aspect of the harp repertoire that can happily welcome an extension is harp and viola: apart from the famous Bax sonata, there is not much original music (much of what there is is helpfully documented by Clinton Nieweg here). Colorado harpist Ann Marie Liss is working on this, with Colorado Symphony viola principal Basil Vendryes - together, they are Duo Esprit.

 

© 2009 Kellie Travers

Ann Marie and Basil began working together out of mutual admiration for each other's playing, and a desire to make their own recording of Bax's Fantasy-Sonata. One piece, however, does not a concert duo make, and they soon busily set about transcribing existing and commissioning new music for the combination. These transcriptions include Chopin Nocturnes, viola works by Bridge, the third Liszt Liebestraum, Gerschwin's Prelude No.2 (in its original key, "so the pedals are insane", as Ann Marie says), and an ambitious new duo version of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Suite for Viola and Orchestra. 

Alongside this, the duo has already commissioned a substantial amount of entirely new pieces. These include music by Justin Taylor, David Tcimpidis (distinguished professor at Mannes School of Music, NY), Christopher Malloy, Andrea Ferrante, Riccardo Iznaola (Composer, concert guitar and recording artist, orginally from Cuba), and Chason Goldfinger. Basil and Ann Marie are also in talks with grammy-nominated composer Robert Paterson who wants to write for them, as well as film composer Robert Litton.

"We also just got the fresh-off-the-press notes this week from The Playground Ensemble director, Conrad Kehn, to be premiered in Feb 2012, and we're waiting for the final version of a piece from a Texan astrophysicist composer working in Chile, Martin Gaskell", Ann Marie reports. "It's funny how quickly our vision has moved away from "just" recording the Bax and playing a few local recitals to being asked to travel the country now. I think some people might be suspicious of us becoming a strictly contemporary music ensemble because of the commissioning aspect, but it's been interesting to hear how non-modern some of the works sound so far. Every new piece is an adventure!"

If you're interested in discovering this repertoire, Ann Marie and Basil hope to make a recording soon. Meanwhile, keep an eye on Duo Esprit's concert schedule - or if you run a concert season, invite them to perform, because substantial recordings don't get paid for by the substantial-recording fairy.

The Harp Salon, Shenzhen

 

When Jakez is in China, he always visits Queenie Qian, who runs a thriving teaching studio in Shenzhen – the Harp Salon. Queenie set up the Harp Salon after she realised, on moving to Shenzhen seven years ago, that many people were interested in the harp and its culture. The salon is not only a teaching venue, but also a concert one. Queenie organises concerts there about once every two months, in which she and her students perform. The audience vote for the best performer, who then receives a prize at the end.

 

Queenie’s work has deservedly won wider recognition. She and her students were invited to perform as part of the "Beautiful Sunday" concert series patronised by the Ministry of Culture. This series takes place every Sunday at the Shenzhen concert hall, a substantial venue of nearly 1800 seats. Recently, the harp group also appeared in another Ministry of Culture series at the same hall – this one on Saturdays, "Musical Tea". 

Bravo to Queenie for her work developing and popularising the harp in her region! It is not always easy to interest the wider world in our instrument, and it is always great to find that it can and does happen, thanks to harpists' personal energy, organisation and creativity.