Harpblog

Conte de Jataka

We're very proud to be the exclusive harp maker sponsors of a fantastic, harp-theatre project that will take place on May 11th and 12th at the Théâtre de Beausobre in Morges, Switzerland. 

Marielle Nordmann is no stranger to poetic, interdisciplinary creations, and she created Conte de Jataka together with young harpists in Paris, in 2011. The project's inspiration is one of the 547, ancient Indian Jataka tales. These describe the previous lives of the Buddha: more broadly, they are about subjects and values as pertinent today as they were when the stories began in 4 BC. As well as Marielle herself, Conte de Jataka involves sixteen young harpists in diverse harp ensembles, a dancer, and a narrator, together with the French theatre director Marie-Pierre Labrune. Marielle's idea is to blend different art forms, musical styles, and ages, arriving at a fresh, modern retelling. The new elements, and the intense collaboration with others, jog us into thinking about matters of universal relevance more clearly, more consciously: se rassembler pour mieux créer, as Marielle puts it, working together to create better. 

Conte de Jataka is travelling to Switzerland thanks to Céline Gay des Combes, and Elodie Wulliens. Together, they formed an association - Créativ'Harp - which as its name suggests aims to promote the harp in its most versatile and creative forms. It is also an organisation with a strong pedagogic focus, in charge of selecting the sixteen young harpists involved in Conte de Jataka, its first major project. The result is an impressive roll call of pupils from nine conservatoires across French-speaking Switzerland, and even further afield, in German-speaking Switzerland and parts of France. "We are thrilled by the response from our colleagues to this project", Céline explains. "Even if we organise the immediate logistics, the venue, the rehearsal schedule with Marielle, and so on, the project still needs considerable input from the students' own teachers. I'd particularly like to thank to Geneviève Chevallier, Isabelle Martin-Achard, Marie-Luce Challet-Rapposo, Aurore Dumas, Laetitia Belmondo, Chantal de Limoges and Nyon Elise Estavoyer, for their work on the harp parts with the students throughout the year. We're also very grateful for the vote of confidence from Pierre Amoyal, who has agreed to be patron of the event."

Like Marielle, Céline has created multidisciplinary harp projects before, for example a show for children aged between four and ten, and another for everyone aged between nine and ninety-nine. 

"I think children are used to a lot of different and rapidly-changing media, together - it can be hard to catch their attention through music alone. This is one reason to create interdisciplinary projects. Another is that they presents music in the context of dynamic, big-scale group efforts, achievements that belong to everyone. If you have the chance to take part in a major school play or youth orchestra, usually you remember the experience for the rest of your life, whatever you go on to do as an adult. 

You remember the school play or orchestra course not just because of the scale on which you worked, but because of what that work was about.  The Jataka tale we're portraying is about subjects like difference, vulnerability, humility, transformation and self-knowledge. Our show is also about how many different art forms - different styles of music, words, dance - express and teach us about such subjects. And, of course, the students have the chance to share the stage with a great artist, which is also an irreplacable experience for a budding musician. All in all, music should be a part of everyone's education. Irrespective of whether you become a musician or not, music has a part to play in your development - and so by extension that of humanity in general - that can't be matched elsewhere."

You can find ticket information for Conte de Jataka here. We'll be holding a harp exhibition and offering regulation opportunities throughout the weekend - if you would like to book your harp in to be regulated, please email harpblog@camac-harps.com. 

 

Artist/Teacher of Harp Wanted, Mahidol University, Thailand

Mahidol University

Artist/Teacher of Harp

Mahidol University, College of Music, Artist/Teacher of Harp. Appointment beginning June 1, 2013, or as soon as possible thereafter.

 

21st masterclass session, Harpe en Avesnois, with Frédérique Cambreling

The 21st masterclass session organised by the legendary festival Harpe en Avesnois will be taught by Frédérique Cambreling. It will take place between Friday, February 8th 2013, and Sunday, February 10th, in Feignies in North East France.

The session will begin with one of Karlheinz Stockhausen's final works: Freude, for two harps, voice and electro-acoustic sound processing. It will be performed by Frédérique Cambreling and Bleuenn Le Friec (harps and voice), and Vincent Carinola (sound desk). 

The session will then continue as follows:

Russians abroad: HarpMasters in Switzerland

If you’re not in St Petersburg and my last post has whetted your appetite to find out more about the harp in Russia, you could do a lot worse than sign up for the HarpMasters summer Academy in Switzerland. This is not a “Russian school harp camp” – it’s a high-level, general international summer school, like most of the others you’ll find on the Harpblog listings page. But it is directed by Irina Zingg, and Milda Agazarian is always one of the professors-in-residence. As such, it has the best English-speaking Russian school presence of any harp academy.

Report on the Latin American Travelling Harp Workshop

Last week, Marisela González, Mercedes Gómez and Isabelle Moretti launched their entirely new project - the Taller Itinerante de Arpa de Pedales, the Travelling Harp Workshop. This very special idea aimed to make it easier for harp students in Latin America to access the sort of international masterclass most harp students take for granted. Because it is normally too expensive for these students to travel to standard masterclass and course programmes, Isabelle Moretti travelled with Mercedes and Marisela to Mexico. Jakez went too.

 

Jakez en route to Mexico City airport

Many thanks to Mercedes and Marisela for their Harpblog report!

 

TALLER ITINERANTE DE ARPA DE PEDALES

with Isabelle Moretti  

Mexico City, April 25-30, 2012

 

Escuela Nacional de Música, sponsored by Camac Harps

 

All good things come to an end. In this case, we hope the end is only the beginning, since this very new format of a travelling workshop, designed specially for Latin American harp students, really needs to continue. We will keep working on ideas to make it possible again.

Our first edition of the Taller Itinerante de Arpa de Pedales was an intense six days of workshops with Isabelle Moretti. There were group and individual masterclasses. The week finished with a concert, in which selected students performed the pieces they had worked on with Isabelle - who also performed for the students, as they sat close by.

 

 

Thoughts on masterclasses

Recently I’ve been lucky enough to attend two masterclasses by wonderful teachers. Last week, Isabelle Moretti was working with the class of the Royal Academy of Music, and this weekend it’s been our great pleasure to welcome Patrizia Tassini to l’Espace Camac in Paris. 

 

Jakez thanks Patrizia Tassini

 

Harpists have a lonely life. Usually you are the only one at school who plays the harp, before continuing to be alone in most of your professional walks of life - in the orchestra or chamber ensemble, while your instrument baffles composers, conductors and colleagues. This solitary state has its advantages. I was the only member of my former orchestra who was always on speaking terms with everyone, probably because I didn’t have to work closely with anyone. Sometimes you get work a flautist of the same level can only dream of. If you want to, you can convince many conductors that things you don’t feel like practising are impossible. But none of these perks are artistic. They are only opportunistic.

A large harp class such as that enjoyed by London’s RAM, or with Patrizia in Udine, does much to counteract a harpist’s unsplendid isolation. The harp world, though small, is still big enough even for those of us who travel around it constantly to be surprised and to learn, every day. Anyway, mastering any instrument is a Herculean task. Generally you need ten thousand hours of practice to be able to play virtuoso works - which in the profession today is just the beginning. 

 

At the Royal Academy of Music

 

Listening to a great teacher give a masterclass is like finding many keystones of musical experience crystallised in one person: things you might otherwise need years to find. Even if your own teacher is a master themselves, they have to spend more time on the mundane aspects of your studies: writing in fingering, correcting hand position, pointing out where a run is not even, and so on. Your lesson is also private, focusing on what you alone are doing. A masterclass, on the other hand, is for many people to perform diverse works at concert standard. It is about the big picture: "how things are”, as Isabelle described it in London.

 

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."