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.
Anne Vanschothorst has designed a competition with a twist. A Bird Came Flying is a set of five short original pieces written by Anne herself, and published by Inge Frimout-Hei in September 2011. The compositions' minimalist style lend themselves to improvisation and sound processing - and this is what Anne's competition is for.
There are three categories - for performers, for sound engineers, and also we are sponsoring a prize for the best youth (under eighteen) entry. The music is appropriate for lever and pedal harpists from intermediate level and up, so we would like to encourage young harpists to take the accessible opportunity Anne is offering to explore sound processing.
Entries should be submitted via YouTube (performers) or YouTube / SoundCloud (sound engineers), by February 28th, 2012. All details are available on the competition site, where Anne has also helpfully posted some sound clips to give you an idea of the sorts of things that can be done with the score. There is also a Facebook page.
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 the USA 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.
The deadline for voting is this Friday, that's TOMORROW, and you can vote here. As Corrina says - I am sure you have already voted, but has your pal next door?
The Camac factory, deep in the Breton countryside, is a serene place. Birds tweet, sheep baa, and the soft pinging of harp-tuning gently blends with us humming Je Suis Encore Dans Mon Printemps as we go about our emails. But today, it's time for something different. Click on the video below for some electric harp rock!
Lena Woods, Jamie, Ricky and Mat are Grand Square Dance, and they’ve just released a new single: ‘Alive and Breathing’. Lena, their singer, is a classically-trained harpist, while Jamie (guitar), Mat (drums) and Ricky (bass) are rock musicians. Mix them together and you have a new sound for the French pop-rock scene, with melodies inspired by U2, vocals worthy of Pat Benetar, and experimental instrumentals that feel like Metallica, or Skunk Anansie.
Grand Square Dance was formed in 2008 in Rouen, Normandy. The group has released two EPs (2009, and February 2011). Their first EP was a mixture of rock and soul, but 2011 has seen them head more in the direction of hard rock, plus the electric harp. Alongside the heavy guitar riffs, energetic percussion and powerful vocals that remind you of the 1990s, the harp provides a more melodic, posied element.
Lena has played the harp since the age of seven (taught by her mother, director of Rouen’s Harpa school), but she broke off her harp lessons to concentrate on rock music in her teens. Grand Square Dance was originally a classic rock formation, and they released two albums like this (available here on FNAC). For their third album, of which their latest single ‘Alive and Breathing’ will be a part, they wanted to do something new.
"We immediately thought that integrating the electric harp could be very original and exciting’, Lena explains. "It’s true that it’s not the instrument that first springs to your mind when you think of rock music. But two years ago I had re-started my harp lessons, with Myriam Serfass, and I’d been exploring jazz harp. I quickly became interested in rock harp. Camac’s blue harps can be amplified and their sound processed like that of guitars, so even if the harp originally couldn’t have played any part in rock, it can now. We’re working on making my Baby Blue electric lever harp part of all the songs on our new album. You can follow our progress on MySpace and Facebook. There’ll be a tour in 2012, and a lot of other gigs before that too!"
Fab harpist singer-songwriter Tara Minton is playing a show at London's Regal Room tonight, at 8PM British time. It's going to be streamed live on the internet, so if you can't go to the show in person, you can watch it here.
Tara in a pub in London with - yes, that is Ronnie Wood
Thank you to Deborah Henson-Conant for sending us this photo of her working on-tour with Katya Herman and the DHC Blue Light! Look how lightly and effortlessly Deborah and Katya are standing with their harps...
If you watch MTV, you might have already seen these videos by Cristina Braga and Ricardo Medeiros that the channel has picked. Now that doesn't happen to the harp world very often!
The website for Shelley Frost's Dubai cultural centre, The Fridge, is now live. Shelley is an amazing harpist who has turned providing music for the highest profile events into an art form - read Harpblog's earlier interview with her here. In addition to events and corporate work, Shelley founded The Fridge in order to build up Dubai's concert scene. Like everything Shelley does, The Fridge's website is fantastically well-presented, with all the best features the web can offer today's musicians.
