Updates: Virtual and In Person Lessons, Performing, Celticharper Page

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Harp and piano lessons are now available both online and in person as of 2020! I’m happy to use the platform of your choice, although I prefer Zoom due to the ability to fine-tune the sound quality for musicians. I’m also playing regularly again both solo and with various other musicians, so feel free to contact me if you have an upcoming event that would be enhanced by live music, either private or public. I’m also happy to lead workshops or group classes, provide musical tutoring, and help with arranging. I gained a lot of experience when I had students in the Kawartha Youth Orchestra tweaking orchestra parts for Celtic harp! I’ve also had decades of experience arranging music for large and small ensembles, from Classical to Celtic to pop and early/medieval music.

My ultimate goal is to gradually move all of the old celticharper.com pages to this site, but as you can likely tell from the last blog entry, life has a habit of getting in the way. In the meantime, just be aware that the celticharper.com site is a collection of archived pages at the moment, and not currently being updated, unless someone contacts me specifically to have a link removed.

Hope everyone is enjoying the last bright beautiful days of summer! Make music freely with abandon wherever you are, and remember, it’s never too late to regain your love of music, or learn a new instrument.

Carolan’s Dream, Mark Harmer

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What a special treat to end off the day (Saturday night at Somerset Online): an O’Carolan play-along with a whole host of stellar Celtic musicians including Ann Heymann, Grainne Hambly, Sue Richards, Nancy Hurrell, Dominique Dodge, Philip Boulding, and Siobhan Armstrong (did I miss anyone??). Here’s a lovely version of Carolan’s Dream (played by Mark Harmer) to send you off to sleep.

Hiromi & Edmar Castaneda – Libertango

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Just finished a super challenging but fun bass hand workshop with Edmar Castaneda through Somerset Online. Talk about a radically different technique from what I’m used to using on Celtic harp! Not sure my wrist would be up to doing it full time, but it was a blast trying it out. Here Edmar is playing with Hiromi Castaneda. Both of them regularly stretch their respective instruments past where most people would normally go – a good reminder that harp and piano are nearly limitless in what they can do, if you give your imagination free rein.

Eleanor Turner, Baroque Flamenco (Composer: Deborah Henson-Conant)

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Second jazz-themed Somerset Online workshop today was with Deborah Henson-Conant, a great introduction to jazz chord sequences using a novel and accessible approach based on hand/chord “shapes” that provide endless possibilities for improvisation. We’re all used to seeing Deborah with her trademark electric harp, but in this video we get to see pedal harpist Eleanor Turner playing one of Deborah’s pieces, while Deborah conducts the orchestra.

Tristan Le Govic, Trio Harpo

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I went with a jazz theme for my Somerset workshops today. First was a jazzy approach to traditional music with Tristan Le Govic. One of the things I love about Somerset is how much joy and enthusiasm all the presenters bring to both their workshops and performances This is Tristan playing with “Trio Harpo” in 2019.