Sunday Spotlight

Welcome to today’s Sunday Spotlight!  For this week, I’m going to be rather self indulgent and post three links about me… :) Earth Day was April 22nd, and I was reminded that last year, in an early Earth Day concert, Paula Kifner and I premiered the cello and harp version of my composition Cotton Butterfly: […]

Leading off today’s spotlight is a wonderful piece of free software – GNU Solfege. It offers a whole bunch of useful ear training exercises – good stuff! Then, this is interesting – Wynton Marsalis’s “Twelve Ways to Practice” And finally, I’ll be playing Sir Granville Bantock’s “Hamabdil” in a concert on May 3rd with harp and

To lead off this week’s Sunday Spotlight here’s a fascinating video that’s not directly related to music – but an interesting look at performing works today that were created many years ago… Then, this is a fun story :)  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/arts/music/michael-fabianos-7-hours-from-call-to-stage-at-the-metropolitan-opera.html And finally, I mentioned IMSLP last week – here’s another great resource for public domain music

Leading off today’s Sunday Spotlight, this is fun – various composer’s treble clefs… I originally saw this come by on my facebook feed.  A google search turned up various instances of it, but I couldn’t find any attribution for the photo. Also, I assume it’s true, but I haven’t checked… :)  Here’s another link with

To start this week, a link that got posted on one of the harp email lists I’m on (hat-tip to Janis) – “Musical Migrants” about musical emigrants from the Val d’Agri (Italy).  Tons of pictures of harps and a fascinating read: http://www.youblisher.com/p/813853-Italian-Historical-Society-Journal-Musical-migrants Then, I saw this come by on my facebook feed – pretty funny

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