Harpblog

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.

 

Grégory Cappoen and Telenn Armor

Camac Harps have their factory and head offices in Brittany. Brittany, along with Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Cornwall, is a Celtic land, and where there were once Celts you usually find a thriving lever harp scene today. 

Grégory Cappoen is a lever harpist and teacher in Brittany's administrative capital of Rennes. He has developed a particularly genial teaching concept: Telenn Armor. Telenn Armor is a mobile teaching studio, offering lessons at venues in the North, South and centre of Rennes. It also offers different types of lessons - with or without solfège, individual and group - and a creative and practical series of additional courses. Grégory has been kind enough to tell Harpblog about it!

 

Grégory Cappoen

"When I was seven, I joined Brittany's first lever harp class, founded by Mariannig Larc'hantec in Lorient. If you want to become a lever harpist, obviously it is great to find yourself in a class dedicated to that instrument. There is nothing wrong with being a concert harpist who teaches lever harp on the side, but you'll not be so involved in the specific techniques and repertoire that belong entirely to the lever harp. This is one fact that has inspired me offer a lever harp school of my own.

 

Lorenzini-Moretti dream team at Harpmasters

This year, the Harpmasters summer school featured a special double masterclass by Germaine Lorenzini and Isabelle Moretti, together! Many thanks to Veronika Lemishenko and Annamaria Gergeley for these reports.

"This year`s Harpmasters was especially bright and fascinating - largely thanks to Germaine Lorenzini and Isabelle Moretti.

They brought us fresh motivation and the desire to develop ourselves, through their experience, knowledge and inspiration! 

Firstly, Isabelle Moretti gave a fabulous concert with her delicate musicality and fiery expression of emotion. The following day we had the exciting master-class with the opportunity to learn from such magnificent, experienced and world-class harpists: Isabelle Moretti and Germaine Lorenzini. 

Personally for me it was very thrilling to play Fauré's Impromtu to Isabelle, as she herself is one of the world's best interpreters of this piece. And she helped me so much!! Her description of the intricacies of French music was especially interesting and evocative. How to your feelings and desires in your playing, and how to live with the music, became much clearer to me. I hope that I will be able to keep and develop everything that Isabelle Moretti gave me.

And then we had the masterclass from Germaine Lorenzini! It was breathtaking, unusual: in just a few words she brought so much fire and life to the music. She knew exactly what to do! Amazing.  

We all were so impressed by this master-class from...MARVELLOUS MUSICIANS!!! 

Thanks so much to Camac Harps for sponosoring the Harpmasters Celebrity Guest Programme and for these unforgettable days!

Veronika Lemishenko

"In 2011 for the very first time I experienced Harp Masters Academy in Switzerland. I came away with many emotions trying to fit them in the most suitable "boxes" of my life as a performing artist and as a person .

Thoughts and ideas still go through my mind as thunders ever since I left that place. It takes time and reflection on that massive amount of information, gathered during a very intense period of time.
It needs to settle, flourish and mature like the most exquisite French wine.

There is a reason why I mention French in my description, as I find the French way of performing the most complete, enriching way towards achieving a full bodied artistic result!

It is the sensitivity, it is the fire, the flames and its different shades from bright yellow to dark red and purple, it is the flirtation with every single note, and the courage to court the most majestic sounds and go beyond those fears of being on stage while attempting to reach out to the audiences' deepest emotions, grab them and take them on a musical journey. Your journey!

When interpreting music one must dare to let it flow or to cut it short, one must dare to shock and to absorb, one must dare to run away in flames and return like the most peaceful sea of waves and calmness.
Music is passion in the true sense of the word! Passion for love, life and giving!

Music making is probably one of the most complex professions one can have, if trying to get to the highest possible level. It' s not easy but it is not impossible, and the latter should be kept deep inside our minds. It needs an immense amount of focusing, thinking, and intelligent practice of personally suitable technique and interpretation. Every note must be thought through, every note has to become our second nature, every note has to come as the most natural continuance of our emotions, with consideration towards the composer's message, the musical period's rules and expectations, so that as a result we may reach full aesthetic entity.

Isabelle Moretti and Germaine Lorenzini pulled and pushed all these emotions through my inner being and dipped it into their fantastic world of passion, intelligence and fire.

I will be forever thankful for those hours of happiness and pure joy of being with the most amazing two harpists and professors I have ever met!"

Annamaria Gergeley

 

Christine Pemsl awarded European School Music Prize 2011

A little while ago, Camac's head office in Mouzeil got a call from Christine Pemsl - ordering no less than six electroharps.

"I hadn't yet collected all the money together, but I thought, if I don't do it now, it will never happen", Christine told me yesterday over Kaffee und Brezn in her leafy conservatory in Kissing, near Augsburg. She was ordering the harps for her ensemble Age of Harp, a harp band made up from among her students. The ensemble is now in its fourth generation, and offers interested students the chance to expand their harp horizons. It shakes audiences out of more or less whatever their preconceptions about the harp might be. Age of Harp has performed throughout Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France, from classical concert halls to with the German punk group Die Aerzte (imagine your harp ensemble getting a gig with Def Leppard). As well as classical repertoire and jazz standards, the ensemble regularly performs works specially written for them, by Christine, by other professional composers and by the students themselves. 'Journey', the ensemble's CD from 2001, includes Bernard Andrés' La Ragazza and Neige by Jean-Michel Damase, but also new works by Mike van der Nahmer, Felix Janosa and Christine herself, and adding instruments such as E-bass, percussion, strings, electric guitars and Puerto Rican congas. Here is the first track on the album: 'Age of Harp' by Mike van der Nahmer, reproduced here with Christine's kind permission.

Download 01 Age Of Harp

I have never come across a student ensemble that has been so active for so long, with such variety in its projects. Christine has folder after folder with hundreds of pages of press cuttings and concert programmes. "I want to open doors for my students", she explains, "make them aware that a harp need not be something exclusive, or exclusively classical. It's an instrument for everyone, and you can use it in so many different ways.

Musicians have to be trained, but equally it is possible to train music out of students. It's very important to me not to stifle the personal creativity of my students. We spend a lot of time on harmony, so they understand what they are playing. And I always teach harmony physically, using diagrams that show the students how the shape of chords on the harp correspond to musical structure. It all helps them to begin improvising and composing their own music. Every pupil of mine needs a book with manuscript paper on one page and blank white paper on the opposite side, so they can sketch out ideas however they come to think of them. Then they arrive for their lesson and say "I've got a new song" and we go through it, discuss its harmony and flesh it out."

Class of Marie-Pierre Langlamet at the Harfengalerie Camac Berlin

Great news from David and Mike at the Harfengalerie Camac Berlin: Marie-Pierre Langlamet's class from the Universität der Künste Berlin will give a concert at the Harfengalerie, on Sunday July 10th at 7PM. Don't miss this opportunity to hear Berlin's newest harp class!

As ever, entrance is FREE, but as space is limited please reserve your seat, either via email to info@harfengalerie.de, or call +49 30 - 21 97 11 76.

 

 

Summer school with Germaine Lorenzini

News of another summer school, this one taught by the legend that is Germaine Lorenzini. It is called the Académie Internationale d’Eté de Paris (AIEP) and will run from August 26th until September 4th. All details here. 

Once there was a drop of water...PLING!

Thank you very much to Cécile Becquart-Orzan for sending us this account of an exchange project between two music schools! It is an inspiration for all of us with young harp classes!

In 2010 (on May 30th in Cognac, and June 27th in Anglet), the harp classes from the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Intercommunal de la Communauté de Communes de Cognac, and the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Bayonne, carried out an usually special exchange. They performed a musical - PLING - by Olivier Bensa, which featured one flute and no less than twenty-three Camac harps on the stage!

Directed by the harp professors at the two conservatoires, Cécile Becquart-Orzan from Cognac and Michèle Orzan from Bayonne, PLING is the story - over thirteen different scenes - of a drop of water, travelling around the world. The twenty-three assembled harpists were aged between seven and nineteen, and the musical offered valuable stage experience for all as well as a challenging musical level. The two harp classes worked on the piece all year, and then had three rehearsals alternately in Bayonne and Cognac.

Applications open for Professor of harp, Lausanne

The HEMU Lausanne Conservatory is looking for a new harp professor - further information here. The advertisement is looking for somebody who speaks French well.

Closing date: April 25th, 2011.

Professeur d’enseignement, Châteauroux

I've been asked to spread the news about this teaching job advertisement in Châteauroux, France! If you decide to apply, bonne chance!

 

spécialité HARPE

 

Par voie de mutation ou inscrit sur la liste d’aptitude

Poste à pourvoir à la rentrée 2011-2012

Date limite de dépôt des candidatures : 30 avril 2011

 

Candidature à envoyer à :

Monsieur le Maire

Direction des ressources humaines

Hôtel de ville – BP 509

36012 CHATEAUROUX

 

Renseignements :

Christophe Millet, directeur du CRR

02 54 08 35 70

conservatoire@ville-chateauroux.fr

 

Portrait of Gabriella Dall'Olio

At Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where the next London MIDI harp presentation is taking place on November 23rd, the head of harp is Gabriella Dall'Olio.

Trained in three countries, fluent master of four languages and with concert and teaching engagements stretching all the way to Tasmania, Gabriella is a cosmopolitan figure in the London harp scene. She is also exceptionally well-loved. Warm, generous and energetic, in the space of five years she has built up a thriving harp department, while continuing a busy performing career.

London has always been an exceptionally dynamic musical centre, full of diversity and enterprising musicians. To this day, the culture remains highly freelance. It is hard work for musicians, but fosters the variety and creativity for which the city's music is so famous.

Trinity Laban

Trinity Laban - formerly Trinity College of Music, it has now joined forces with the Laban dance school - strongly reflects this sense of creativity (it is the only London conservatoire to offer a degree in Indian music, for example). Now in a magnificent setting in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, it is gaining more and more of a name for itself, and Gabriella's harp department is one of its leading lights.

Gabriella describes her approach as "collaboration and democracy with high standards". Students are expected to work hard, but are also encouraged to express their opinions and make suggestions. The atmosphere (and I speak from personal experience, because I had lessons with Gabriella) is one of mutual respect and support. It is also excellent preparation for professional life, because everybody shares the responsibility to have an idea and make it happen.