The results of the 2nd International Competition of the Harpist Association of Slovenia are now out! Congratulations to all prizewinners, and to competition organiser Dalibor Bernatović and his team.
Read on to find out more...
Continue reading "2nd International Competition, Slovenia: results" »
Harfengalerie Camac Berlin regularly holds events, such as the pupils' concert recently featured on German TV. Camac Harps are sponsoring a series of concerts, masterclasses and workshops in Berlin, beginning with the first concert of our student recital series on April 2nd. This series is designed to provide a paid concert opportunity for harpists studying in Germany.
We are delighted to welcome Mariam Fathy, a student of Prof. Maria Graf at the Hochschule für Musik Hans Eisler in Berlin, to the Harfengalerie at 8PM on April 3rd, 2010. Her programme will include works by Scarlatti, Fauré, De Falla, Parry, Spohr, Caplet, Pierné und Hoddinott. A few days later, she will be off to Caernarfon for the Wales International Harp Festival - for both concert and competition we wish her the very best of luck!
Konzertreihe 'HochschulstudentInnen im Fach Harfe'!
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.
On February 10th, 2010 at 4:30PM, the Paris Conservatoire class of Isabelle Moretti and Geneviève Létang will give a concert at l'Espace Camac. Admission is free, and you can reserve a seat under +33 1 40 40 08 40.
I'm delighted to announce that Germaine Lorenzini will give three days of public masterclasses in Warsaw in May, sponsored by Camac.
7 - 9 May, 2010
The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Warsaw, Poland
All day (exact timing tbc)
Entrance free
There will also be an EXHIBITION OF CAMAC HARPS AND ACCESSORIES
and
Jakez François will be there with one of Camac's master technicians and bookings are being taken for regulations of Camac Harps.
These regulations will be FREE.
Bookings for harp regulation in English or Polish please to me, helen@camac-harps.com
with details of what harp you have, how old it is (if known) and if
there is anything specifically wrong with it.
Applications to perform in the masterclasses also to me with CV (age, training and achievements to date and name of professor), and pieces you would like to play for Germaine. Chamber music ensembles are welcome as well as soloists!
You can find a Polish version of this announcement on the excellent "glissando" Polish online harp forum. There are also links on the forum to make an online application.
Don't forget that the closing date for applications to compete at the Wales International Harp Festival is January 20th!
There are five competitions to choose from, including early harp and Europe's FIRST POP HARP COMPETITION. In the under-30 classical harp competition, the first prize is a Camac Atlantide Prestige harp!
Win a harp like this!
You can find out more and download the application form from my last Harpblog post about it all, here, or from the festival's own website. You can also listen to a podcast on Britain's national music radio station, Classic FM.
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...
Continue reading "MIDI harp day at the Royal Academy of Music, London" »
On Sunday, January 17th, 2010, L'Espace Camac is delighted to welcome Elisa Vellia for "a day between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic."
Born in Corfu, Elisa grew up surrounded by Greek folk music, as well as learning classical piano. Her taste for adventure led her to London, where she first heard the lever harp, played by a busker on the underground. She soon came to work with the great names of the Irish and Scottish harp scene, and made two recordings of Scottish music. After London, Elisa moved to Brittany, and found a place to live by the sea, the perfect inspiration for her music. Her songs move fluidly between her native Greece and her adopted land, between the waters of the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic.
Elisa holds regular lever harp courses at home in Brittany, and throughout the world. Like her own music, these courses know no boundaries, and invite you to discover not only core techniques of playing and composition, but also songs and dances. The only prerequisite is - be yourself!
Elisa's workshop will take place between 10AM - 12PM and 2PM - 5PM at L'Espace Camac, Paris, on January 17th. She will follow this with a concert at 6PM. Entry is free, and you can reserve places (necessary for the workshop; recommended for the concert) with Florence Ledi, tel. +33 6 71 80 56 47, e-mail. f.ledi@camac-harps.com.
Many thanks to Rebecca Finch (more about Rebecca, later!) for sending me her photos of Janet Harbison's workshop and concert in our Paris showroom, L'Espace Camac. Janet appeared as part of our "Carte Blanche" series on November 15th, 2009, and a wonderful time was had by all.
The next concert in L'Espace Camac will be a "Camac Prizewinners" recital by Claire Iselin and Andreas Mildner, on January 6th, 2010, at 8PM.
Continue reading ""Carte Blanche" to Janet Harbison in Paris" »
Jakez and I have been in Cardiff this week, planning the upcoming Wales International Harp Festival with Artistic Director Elinor Bennett.
Following the success of the first festival in Caernarfon, North Wales in 2006, Camac are delighted to be the main sponsors of the second, in association with our Welsh partner, Telynau Vining Harps. The festival will take place between April 4th - 10th, 2010, and offers no less than five different harp competitions. There are three classical competitions (under 14, under 19 and under 30), with a first prize of a Camac Atlantide Prestige concert harp for the under 30 competition. There is also a competition for triple and other non-pedal harps, where the first prize is a choice of a lever harp from Camac's range. Finally, for the first time in Europe, there will be a pop harp competition for any type of amplified harp.
***The closing date for competition applications is January 20th, 2010!***
Download Wales International Festival 2010 leaflet
At the same time as all these competitions, you will have the chance to relish performances from some of the top harpists in the world: Deborah Henson-Conant, Isabelle Perrin, Constance Luzzati, Mara Galassi, Rhodri Davies, Robin Huw Bowen and Corrina Hewat. The performances range from early and Welsh triple harp, to the world premiere of Rhodri Davies' Harp Feedback, which will have CCTV cameras inside the harp projecting onto a screen. The festival also particularly celebrates the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of Wales's most famous harpists, John Parry.
Portrait of John Parry by his son, William Parry A.R.A (1743-1791). The portrait has been kindly lent by Miles Wynn Cato of Welsh Art, London, and will be on display throughout the festival.
