Irish Birthday Party
Although there are a couple of pubs around town with active seisiúns, I haven’t played at one in years. It was great fun to sit under the trees in a beautiful Santa Ynez garden and jam with three fiddles, a low whistle and a bouzouki. Fiddlers can add such a joyful “swing” to a tune and the bouzouki has that happy bouncy sound. It inspired me enough that I think I'll go to the pub next week (photo courtesy of J. Downs).
A Case of Harp Neglect
Yesterday evening I played at UCSB for a graduate student’s composition recital. The piece for oratorio and orchestra was fairly complicated and there were only a couple of rehearsals so it was a little rough at first but I was impressed with the way it all came together for the performance.
I agreed to play the University’s harp rather than haul mine over to Lotte Lehman concert hall. The thought of looking for convenient parking on campus (it doesn’t exist) and then wheeling my own concert grand a long distance into the theatre wasn’t appealing so I thought I’d be saving myself some trouble by playing a harp that was already on site. This turned out to be not entirely true.
I’d played the school’s harp a few years before and remembered that it was a nice Lyon & Healy style 23 but at our first rehearsal earlier in the week I arrived at the classroom, pulled the torn dust cover off the harp and discovered that it had three broken strings and was filthy dirty. Since the school has no harp program or harp students this poor instrument spends most of its time packed in a trunk and stuffed under a stairwell in the bowels of the music building. The school doesn’t maintain it and certainly has no spare string set on hand, not even a tuning key. For the rehearsal I tuned it up (brought my own key) and just did my best to play around the gaps of the missing strings.
On the evening of the performance I arrived early with my black bag full of harp accessories, replaced the broken strings and tuned feverishly hoping to have the stretchy gut stabilized by concert time. Then I wiped a thick layer of dust and grime off the soundboard and attempted to clean up the deep recesses of the carved column. When was the last time anybody paid any attention to this poor thing? There was nothing I could do just then about the stripped tuning pin on 5th octave A - it would have required vise grips to turn it.
Despite the dings it has suffered in its 50-year life span the harp began to look its regal self once I had it polished up. And aside from its neglected appearance this instrument has a great mature voice, the classic full Lyon & Healy sound, and is a pleasure to play. There’s plenty of spunk left in the old gal. With a regulation, some new pedal felts and a new set of strings it would be in great shape.
I realize that school harps often live a hard life and that schools don’t have unlimited budgets but it pains me to see such a lovely instrument being treated with so little respect. When that harp was built in the Chicago factory there were countless skilled hands involved in assembling the thousands of parts that make up the action, carving the ornate floral patterns into the column and making sure an even finish protected the smoothly-sanded wood. I know that for some people harps are simply objects, tools we use to create and express, but for me they are also beings and they have their own souls. I feel sick just thinking about the horrible crunching sound of each new ding they acquire.
Grace Under Pressure
Last weekend I had the pleasure of playing three concerts with the Santa Ynez Valley Master Chorale conducted by Chris Bowman. On the program was Psalm 150 by Cesar Franck and Faure’s Requiem and Cantique de Jean Racine, all of which were new to my repertoire.
The Franck part was very “harpy” with fun pedal changes, at times with both feet on one side of the harp, and some well-placed arpeggios and glissandos.
The harp part for the Requiem wasn’t too big of a stretch for me but the Cantique certainly was. Some harpists adapt the piano part which consists of flowing triplet figures. Others choose the harp accompaniment written by Marilyn Marzuki (available from harp.com) which is far more interesting and equally more complicated. There are about a zillion pedal changes but it gives the harp some lovely solo moments and full rich harmonies that weave nicely with the other string parts. I did some creative editing on the Marzuki version so the harp got to shine while the part remained playable for me.
Since there were only two live rehearsals with the chorale and orchestra before the performance I found another way to get familiar with the music. YouTube has several videos of various ensembles performing the pieces I was working on so I practiced Psalm 150 with a choir in Budapest and Faure with the Bow Valley Chorus from Alberta, Canada. Rehearsing with a recording is helpful but with the YouTube videos I also had the advantage of being able to see the conductor giving the cues. You gotta love the internet - how else could I play with international ensembles from the comfort of my own music studio and without even having to move the harp?
In the second performance of our concert I was given a good lesson in grace under pressure by Brendan Statom, the double bass player. Due to a pre-existing crack and then an inadvertent tap against the music stand as he played, his bow dramatically self-destructed with a loud shattering sound during the first movement of the Requiem so he was left with just a handful of splintered wood and dangling strands of horsehair. He simply shrugged, tucked the remains of the bow into the holster, and calmly carried on playing his part pizzicato for the duration of that movement. It sounded great and I doubt most of the audience even knew what happened. Then the conductor took a 60-second pause while Brendan sprinted out to his car to fetch a spare bow and when he returned we launched into the second movement.
If my harp ever snaps a bass wire in the middle of a performance I hope I can remember to maintain the same composure!