Harpblog

Camac Fortieth Anniversary Celebrations, Ancenis

 

Over the long weekend of May 25th - 27th, 2012, we will be celebrating Camac's fortieth anniversary with a special festival in Ancenis.

Forty years on from when our company was founded by Joël Garnier (1940-2000), you can find Camac harps held dear in every country where the harp is played - while our factory and head offices remain where they always have been, close by Ancenis in the tiny hamlet of Mouzeil.

One of the best things about our international presence is that we come into contact with a great many, diverse and wonderful harpists. To celebrate our anniversary, we want to share the chance to hear some of our favourite artists with the public closest to home.

 

 

Here is the programme, which we hope will show off the enormous variety of styles of which the harp is capable, performed by some of the finest players of which our instrument can boast. There will be classical, jazz and rock concerts; harp orchestras from Brittany, Alsace, Singapore and the United States; workshops and lectures. There will be a substantial Camac exhibition, and Jakez will also be showing his private collection of historical and traditional harps. There will also be a substantial programme of informal concerts on the streets of Ancenis throughout the weekend - in the station, in shopping centres, campsites, and so on... 

...you can download the full programme below, and also refer to the festival website.

Download Ancenis Festival Programme

Thank-you to the town of Ancenis for welcoming us, to the team of the Théâtre Quartier Libre and all the supporters who are helping us in this adventure - may the sound of harps ring all over the town!

 

Photos of the concert in homage to Joël Garnier

We are collecting photos of the concert in homage to Joël Garnier! If you have any, please send them to harpblog@camac-harps.com. We thought we would put them up in an album on our Facebook page.

Anneleen Lenaerts

 

Dominig Bouchaud

 

Janet Harbison

 

Myrdhin

 

Je vais penser à cela: concert in homage to Joël Garnier

The DVDs for last week's question of the week have already been won, so I can publish this post today. We have all just returned from Saturday's concert in homage to Camac's founder, Joël Garnier, which took place at the Conservatoire Régional de Paris, surrounded by music shops and centres in the Rue de Madrid.

We are touched beyond words by the response of the harp community to this occasion. The concert sold out before we had finished printing the poster, and every artist invited to play accepted immediately. Harpblog's inbox and Florence's telephone have been buzzing with kind messages, speaking of Joël so warmly and fondly, and extending best wishes to Madame Garnier and Joël's family. The concert itself was a joyous occasion, with a rich and varied programme Mariannig Larc'hantec described to me afterwards as "pure Joël", lover of the harp in all its forms. Many thanks to you all for travelling from as far away as Japan to join us in our tribute to our founder. Particular thanks, of course, to the artists who performed: Ion Ivan Roncea (Romania), Florence Sitruk (Germany), Dominig Bouchaud (France), Anneleen Lenaerts (Belgium), Janet Harbison (Ireland), Myrdhin (France), Isabelle Moretti (France), Ghislaine Petit-Volta (France), Mary MacMaster (Scotland) and Patsy Seddon (Scotland), Cristina Braga and Roccardo Medeiros (Brazil), and to Ghislaine, Anneleen, Ion Ivan, Cristina, Claude Bouly and the students of Ghislaine's harp class at the CRR in the world premiere of Bernard Andrès's 'Jazzy' for harp nonet.

 You can download the full programme here:

Download Programme Concert Joel Garnier

The London Harp Sound

A new and quite spectacular CD is the latest release on Cala Records. The brainchild of conductor Geoffrey Simon and harp player Isabelle Perrin, The London Harp Sound features sixteen of Europe’s top harpists—playing in ensemble!

 

 

 

 

 

“Participating in this CD was surprising. I had not imagined how much fun it would be to play in a group of sixteen harpists, like a team, recording works that appeared at first sight to be utterly improbable for this ensemble. And the end result is really a success. Many thanks to Isabelle and Geoffrey for this happy adventure!” Ghislaine Petit-Volta

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The London Harp Sound is the newest addition to The London Sound Series, a popular range of massed single-instrument recordings from Cala Records. For example, The London Horn Sound is the world’s best-selling French horn CD, ever. Virtuosity is at the heart of the concept, and The London Harp Sound is no exception. The arrangements are, to be honest, really difficult and the musicians all have to be top players in order to show off what each instrument can do in ways you never dreamed were possible.

“Although hard to play, each programme, including The London Harp Sound, is designed to be readily accessible to the listener—that is, to people who haven’t necessarily had years of private music lessons”, explains Geoffrey Simon, artistic director and conductor of The London Sound Series. “But ‘accessibility’ so often seems to be synonymous with musical dumbing-down—something which is not only patronising, but, I feel, totally unnecessary. Our recordings of large, single-instrument ensembles are meant to be fun and tuneful—they each include a wide-ranging selection of classical and popular music—while also displaying the best musicianship and in no way compromising the inner essence of what we do.

“For example, in The London Harp Sound we wanted to show how the harp is capable of producing singing, legato melodic lines. This is not something which it is famous for, and not something that is easy to achieve on the instrument. But it IS possible! That’s why an arrangement of the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune was included, and in fact placed at the very start of the CD. Could anything be more of a challenge to recreate on the harp than that extraordinary solo flute beginning?”

Hommage à Joël Garnier now sold out

 

We have been overwhelmed by the response to our concert in homage to Joël Garnier, which is now sold out. We are really looking forward to seeing so many of you there, from all over the world!

Electro prototype

This is the initial protoype of a carbon fibre electric harp, Jakez's first attempt to make a light, portable electric harp, which has now developed into the DHC Blue Light. The prototype is a twenty-five-string harp with a pickup on each string.

You'll be able to read more about the story of Deborah Henson-Conant and her development of a wearable "harness harp" later. Meanwhile, we are donating this prototype to the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. There is also a strong personal connection between Scotland and Camac's electric harps. The first harpists to play the Camac electroharp, more than twenty years ago, were Patsy Seddon and Mary Macmaster. Also, Joël Garnier had the idea of an electroharp while he was at the Edinburgh Harp Festival, and he first displayed his finished instrument there too.

The harp is on its way to Scotland now and should be on view by February 2011, when the museum's Art and Industry/Design gallery re-opens.

 

Hommage à Joël Garnier

Joël Garnier, Camac Harp's founder, died on September 11th, 2000. He was a prolific and impassioned inventor, and he loved harpists and the harp. To commemorate the tenth anniversary of his death, Jakez François is presenting a major concert featuring a wide range of harpists - classical and Celtic - from throughout the world.

It will take place on January 8th, 2011 at 8PM, at the Auditorium Marcel Landowski in the Conservatoire Régional de Paris (14 rue de Madrid, Paris). The following artists will perform on the lever harp: Janet Harbison (Ireland), Myrdhin (Brittany), Patsy Seddon (Scotland), Dominig Bouchaud (Brittany), and Mary MacMaster (Scotland). On the pedal harp, you will be able to hear Ghislaine Petit-Volta (France), Florence Sitruk (Germany), Isabelle Perrin (France), Anneleen Lenaerts (Belgium), Isabelle Moretti (France), Cristina Braga (Brazil) and Ion Ivan Roncea (Romania).

This concert will also present two world premieres: a work by Ton That Tiet for soprano, clarinet, violin and harp, and "Jazzy", a work by Bernard Andrès for harp ensemble specially commissioned by Jakez François, president of Camac Harps.

Admission to the concert is completely free, if you send your reservation to:

joelgarnierconcert@camac-harps.com

Telephone: Florence LÉDI, +33 671 805647

The entire team at Camac Harps are looking forward to welcoming you to this major event in our concert calendar!

Exploring the MIDI harp

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.

Flanders remembers

"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow...".  So begins Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae's famous War Poem, written in the back of a military ambulance after burying a young friend killed in the terrible Second Battle of Ypres, in the spring of 1915. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, watched him write: "His face was very tired but calm as he wrote. He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave.”

 

Ypres, West Flanders, was a notoriously bloody battleground in the First World War, which in its turn killed more – over twenty million, with twenty one million additional casualties - than any other war before or since. The Great War, as it is aptly known in English, ended at eleven o'clock on the eleventh day of November, the eleventh month, 1918 – and it is at this time that Great Britain, France and the Commonwealth countries pause each year in silence, remembering all who have sacrificed their lives in times of war.

 

The Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London, is since the days of King Charles II a retirement and nursing home for old or injured British soldiers (“Chelsea Pensioners” - easily spotted around London in their splendid scarlet coats). And it was to the hospital's beautiful chapel, built by Sir Christopher Wren, that the Belgian Embassy in London invited Sophie Hallynck and her ensemble Arpae to give a moving “Flanders Remembers” concert on November 11^th, 2008.

the story of Camac Harps

This article, by Armel Morgant, appears in the special anthology compiled in the summer of 2008 to celebrate three years of Harpseasons.  Harpseasons is Camac's magazine, where redactrice-en-chef Florence Ledi reports on what we've been up to over the last quarter.  Email Florence to join the mailing list! 

 

 

How does a firm based in Mouzeil - a small town in the Nantes countryside - conquer the Celtic harp market in just a few years, before taking on that of the classical harp, becoming a world leader there too?

Seeing how well it has integrated into Breton music, one would be right in thinking that the Celtic harp is still alive and well today.  Yet it was really only at the beginning of the 1950s that Brittany discovered (or re-discovered, depending on point of view) the harp termed "Celtic", and signed up to it distinctly. Only two decades later the Celtic harp had nonetheless become genuinely popular, following the young musician Alan Stivell's arrival on the international scene.

The Celtic harp became symbolic of a large movement of interest which developed at this time: a re-visiting and modernisation of Breton music, which was to take the most varied forms over the years up to now. Simultaneously, the beginning of the 1970s saw the rise of a large number of roles for the Celtic harp. Yet during these times, to set about playing the instrument was not a given. While it was a relatively easy matter to take lessons from a classically-trained teacher, the question of the instrument itself caused problems, it being difficult to procure one.