One of my favourite moments at the World Harp Congress in 2011 was listening to Sylvain Blassel give a spellbind performance of the entire Bach Goldberg Variations.  Here’s a video of him playing a portion of it: (You can buy his recording of the entire Variations on iTunes) Just played the harp part in Elgar’s

It’s International Women’s Day today!  Here’s a fascinating look at the gender makeup of the “top 20” US orchestras.  Last week I posted a link to an interview with 100 year old former MET harpist, Reinhardt Elster.  In the interview there’s a passing reference to the fact that back when he was hired orchestras were

To lead off with this week, a link that came up on both my facebook feed and one of the harp email lists I’m a part of – an article about 100 year old former MET harpist, Reinhardt Elster. And then, speaking of harpists from an earlier era, here’s a video from 1963 of Marie-Claire

For this week’s spotlight we start with some great “two minute technique” videos by the one and only Deborah Henson-Conant: http://www.hipharp.com/blog/9618 Then a nice collection of traditional pieces freely available – tune plus chords. http://www.cpmusic.com/tradmus.html (I’ve been using The Star of County Down with several students – a nice piece). And finally, this rather unique

In today’s spotlight we start with a wild instrument apparently designed by Leonardo Da Vinci which is part piano, part string instrument (click the “cc” button for English subtitles): I may have posted this before, but this talk by Evelyn Glennie is always worth a watch: I’ll be playing the harp part for Stravinsky’s Firebird

For this week’s Sunday Spotlight we start with a video of cellist and composer Zoë Keating.  She does some super cool stuff with looping – recording herself as she plays and then playing back a section as she moves on to play something new – in a sense creating a whole orchestra on her own…