Harpblog

Au Revoir Florence

As the year draws to a close, it is time to bid farewell to Florence Lédi, who is leaving us for new adventures in a different direction.

 

Florence joined Camac in 2004 as our rédactrice-en-chef. In charge of Harpseasons, our quarterly newsletter of the last seven years, Florence has been entirely responsible for its warm, lively and incisive identity. Harpseasons's articles benefited not only from Florence's beautiful command of the French language, but also from her perspective as someone originally from outside the harp world. When you play a minority instrument, it is easy to become too niche; yet insularity benefits nobody, and Florence and her articles rapidly and deservedly grew popular with harpists all over the world.

 

 

We don't feel that Harpseasons could continue in the same vein without Florence, and so we will preserve it as it is, rather than continue to have it written by another person. You can download all the back issues here. There is also a fabulous Harpseasons special issue, which Florence created for the Vancouver World Harp Congress. This publication will continue to be available throughout 2012 (please email harpblog@camac-harps.com with your postal address if you would like a copy). We wish Florence all the very best for her new ventures, and we will treasure the piece of Camac history she has made.

 

 

 

L'Espace Camac Christmas Party, December 11th 2011

 

L'Espace Camac's annual festive Christmas Party will take place on December 11th, at l'Espace Camac between 2 - 5 PM. The party offers a open stage to all ages, levels and types of harpists - come along and perform in a friendly and supportive atmosphere, full of Christmas cheer! 

There will also be coffee and FREE CHOCOLATE - I'd expect nothing less from an event organised by Claude.

To sign up to play, email claude on c.bouly@camac-harps.com, or call Claude or Solène on  +33 (0) 1 40 40 08 40. 

 

Ayelet's Strings: new Camac representation in Israel

After years of no harp shop in the land, good news for harpists in Israel - Aylet's Strings, Camac's new representation in Tel Aviv, is now open! It has been founded by Camac-certified harp technician Nadav Konieczny and his mother, Nili, and finally offers Israeli harpists the chance to buy harps and accessories directly, and to have their harps regulated whenever it suits them.

"I have a background in fixing things, like cars", Nadav explained to Harpblog yesterday, "so when we inherited a Russian harp with a broken neck mechanism I tried - with the help of a harp manual - to fix that too. Harps are very neglected in Israel because of the scarcity of regulation tours, and it has always been difficult to get hold of parts for independent repairs. I ended up working on quite a few harps belonging to friends and local teachers, and in the end we thought - we're doing a lot of helping out here, so why not make it official?  

 

We contacted Eric Piron at Camac France about the possibility of becoming Camac partners in Israel. He responded warmly, and invited us to Mouzeil so that Nadav could take the Camac technical course and become a certified Camac technician. Aylet's Strings has now been open for three months, and we will be exhibiting at the first Israeli Harp Festival next week. I will be conducting a workshop for harpists in basic harp maintenance, and we'll also be bringing a fine Atlantide Prestige and a Bardic for people to try. We're also lending this Atlantide to artists performing in the festival who cannot bring their own harp, so of course we are also organising time for them to get used to the harp before they perform.

We hope we can offer harpists a valuable resource both for buying new instruments, and having their existing ones repaired for the first time in Israel. I'm designing a harp trolley at the moment, which a racing car manufacturer I know will then build. The point is to be able to offer accessories without astronomical import costs. At the moment, if you buy a low range harp trolley for $300, you have to pay $700 on top of that for the shipping from the US.

In any case, I take a lot of pleasure in good technical design. I really admire the innovations Camac has brought into harp design, from the way they have eliminated the possibility of broken pedal rods, to the disc system that gives a more precise intonation. They are the harps of the twenty-first century, and I can't wait to see what they come up with next."

 

"Nadav Konieczny is a talented harp technician, whom it has been a pleasure to work with on the Camac technical course. I am delighted that he and Nili are now our official partners in Israel. Our instruments should now be more accessible and affordable for Israeli harpists, as well as such a good technician now being available full-time."

Jakez François

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nili Konieczny at the Camac factory in Mouzeil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nili and Claude at L'Espace Camac in Paris

Je vous présente...Solène Monconduit

In Paris, it's la rentrée, the new season, and l'Espace Camac is busier than ever. The store is humming with harpists calling in to rent harps, have their own regulated, stock up on strings and music, and to practise and teach in the two designated studios.

Last year, l'Espace Camac's former manager Alexis departed for adventures in China, and the search was on for a new colleague for Claude. And here is Claude’s colleague - Solène Monconduit.

Solène is both a harpist and a singer. She grew up in a musical family where everybody played an instrument. She started the piano very young, then progressed to the harp once she was twelve, when she studied with Marie-Pierre Cochereau at the Caen Conservatoire National de Région in Normandy. At university, Solène studied psychology, where pressure of time put her harp-playing on hold. Musically, she concentrated more on singing. She eventually took a sabbatical from her masters in psychology in order to go to theatre college, be able to sing and to devote her time to music and the dramatic arts.

 

 

Mailing list clean-up time!

Photo: Yvonne White

If you click on this link, you will be taken to an email we're sending round in order to update our mailing list. Please send your details to mailing@camac-harps.com if you would like to join it!

 

Les Harpes Camac on Facebook

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Because Camac is so modern and innovative, we've been getting all social media and have moved our old Facebook group to a new Facebook page. It is called - wait for it - Les Harpes Camac. We decided to do this so we would have an excuse to be on Facebook at work because the facebook page format allows us to do a couple of things that are tricky on the blog. These include more extensive photo and video albums, and discussion forums. Harpblog aims to be transparent with its open comments, but the Facebook wall allows you to post an open question on any subject, even if it hasn't been featured on Harpblog.

If you "like" our Facebook page, you can also add your own photos to a "fans' photo album". Clever, eh? We'll be making harps capable of playing "popular music" next.

Diary updates

I've just updated Harpblog's various listings - competitions, festivals, courses and the general diary. A lot of events get posted twice: a festival, for example, goes not only into the diary but also - funnily enough - up on the "festivals" page.

Some things only go up in the general diary, so I would like to draw your attention to a couple of nuts-and-bolts events that are an integral part of our instrument service.

Firstly: our regulation tours. Jakez, Daniel and our team of technicians are perpetually off on regulation tours and we do our best to make regulating your Camac as convenient for you as possible. Please get in touch with us at any time if you would like to know when the next regulation tour near you is going to be, or if you would like to ask us to organise one. Regulations are usually possible at our other events too, such as festivals, assuming one of our technicians is attending.

It's a hard life, carrying out regulation tours. This is where Jakez was last week, Qatar...

Secondly, on March the 26th and 27th, we are holding another big sale of second-hand harps (all makes) at l'Espace Camac in Paris. We have a substantial collection of second-hand harps which get part-traded for new Camacs. We overhaul these harps thoroughly before selling them on, so the sale is a great chance to find a lot of second-hand instruments together that have all been newly conditioned.

Second-hand harps are also available via our online store. You can get in touch with us at any time with questions via our commercial site, or of course via harpblog@camac-harps.com.

A second-hand Atlantide after servicing in our workshops. This particular harp is no longer for sale, but gives you an idea of the sort of restoration work we do before selling on second-hand instruments.

You'll be relieved to see our workshops are non-smoking as well. Either that, or agree that one cleverer than me would have moved the harp six inches to the left before photographing it.

 

Je vous présente...Massimo Alboreto

It's time for another "je vous présente...": Harpblog's occasional series of portraits of members of the Camac team. This time, "je vous présente..." has headed for the warm south to talk with Massimo Alboreto, Enrico Tartarotti's colleague at Camac Italia.

 

Massimo met Enrico two years ago, by means of - like so much successful business - happy chance: their daughters are at school together. The two fathers' playground conversations about the harp world rapidly turned into formal collaboration, and Massimo has been working at Camac Italia for the last year. By profession, he is an events manager, with twenty-five years of experience organising meetings and conferences in the corporate sphere. It is this non-harpist know-how that he and Enrico are putting to good use, as they develop new projects for the Italian harp scene.

"I'm not a harpist, but I was immediately taken with the idea of working in the harp world. I like the fact it's quite small and particular, because you can really get to know the individual artists within it. Also, perhaps because it's something of a niche, it's a world that labours under various pre- and misconceptions about what it is like. I especially notice these misconceptions because I'm not a harpist, so I'm aware of how people "on the outside" view the harp.

For example, it's still the case in Italy that the majority of non-harpists, if they think about the harp at all, think of the cliché of a girl in a long dress playing gentle music. So we organised our recent classical / jazz masterclass weekend to highlight the instrument's musical versatility. Of course, masterclasses are primarily for people who already play the harp, but the event also caught the interest of non-harpists, like the press. I'm very happy about this - the more the general music world takes an interest in harp events, the better it is for harpists.

Similarly, at the moment we're working on finding settings for the harp that are relatively new or unusual in Italy. This has a double-edged effect: it creates new avenues of work for harpists, and it helps get new people interested in the harp. They then engage harpists or take harp lessons, and the positive circle continues. If you want to develop a market you need to be creative and reach out. Small is beautiful, but it should never mean insular."

Je vous présente...Yves Linard

Speaking of Edmar Castaneda and the Columbian harp Camac have made for him brings me to the next in Harpblog's "Je vous présente..." series of Camac team portraits.  Yves Linard is Camac's head engineer. 

When Jakez has an idea for something new in our harps' design, it is Yves who formalises this idea.  He uses computer software to create a precise model, which is then adjusted in collaboration with our woodwork managers Christophe Chapron and Philippe Ruault to build a workable prototype.  The 3D software Yves uses automatically gives the measurements of every individual part (and adjusts them in relation to changes made), and allows any one aspect of the harp to be viewed and worked on in isolation in any state.  For example, a chain of links in the pedal mechanism can be viewed not only statically, but also as if the pedal is moving:  important for a harp that will not only look good, but also work when you play it.  All our harps have had full computer models since 2005.  Before that, Yves had a simpler programme which allowed him to design the dimensions of the harps' individual pieces, but didn't include the moving patterns the software can calculate today.  The new software allows Yves to make calculations within a week that ten years ago would have taken a month, too.

On this photo of Yves's computer you can see a model of the inside of a harp soundbox, with the reinforcing ribs. 

 

 

 

 

 

When Edmar asked us to make him a Columbian harp, Jakez gave Yves a drawing he had made of Edmar's current harp, with its measurements, and a disc of photos of the harp from every angle, inside and out.  Yves then created a computer model of the skeleton of Edmar's harp, one piece at a time.   Obviously, it would be pointless only to copy the harp Edmar has already, so the idea was to improve on it, and create a Columbian harp that is lighter and yet stronger than the original.  Everything that makes a harp strong, such as reinforcements within the soundbox, adds weight, so the engineering challenge is to work out where weight can be removed without compromising the strength.  String tension is also an important factor in how strong a harp needs to be, but obviously that can also only be adjusted within playable parameters.

Below is the first prototype for Edmar's new light, strong Columbian harp.  One of the obvious reasons why it can be so light is the very thin column.  This is only possible because Columbian harps have a much lighter string tension than concert harps.  Yves has to precisely calculate the measurements of the column, neck and soundboard ribs in relation to the optimum string tension.

Here are some of the prototypes that followed before perfecting the final instrument!

Become a Camac Voice!

If you have visited www.camac-harps.com, you probably know that our website has a harp and cello arrangement of Fauré’s Après une rêve as its welcoming music. Much as we love this piece, it has been on the site for over three years, and it’s time for a change!

We would like to invite you to send us your own recordings. Each selected recording will then be featured on our site for one month, with links to the performer’s own site (or preferred publicity details). Every time the music changes, it will be announced on www.harpblog.info, together with an extensive presentation about the music and the artist performing it. We will also create a ‘Camac voices’ page, where recordings past and present are collected together, and where information, links and publicity can remain more permanently.

THE CHALLENGE IS: we are looking for pieces between fifty and sixty seconds long, and we would particularly welcome music you have created yourselves!

Here are the other conditions:

Music submitted should be free of rights, and come with a declaration giving us permission for us to broadcast it online.

Music can be any style and on any type of harp. From early to electric, folk to Latin: we will even enjoy listening to music that is not played on a Camac!

Music can be for solo harp, or any ensemble / group featuring harp as the main instrument.

Please submit recordings in whichever of these two ways is most convenient for you: via email to harpblog@camac-harps.com, or on a CD to the address below.

We are open to all ideas! We hope very much you will apply, and have fun doing so.

Camac Harps
La Richerais
BP 15
44850 Mouzeil
France