Singer and composer Julianna Barwick and harpist Mary Lattimore released the album Tragic Magic on Jan. 16, featuring six original tracks and one cover. Created shortly after the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, Tragic Magic explores themes of “tragedy, wonder, and the restorative power of shared experience” (according to the album description on Bandcamp).
Barwick and Lattimore created the album in Paris during a nine-day recording session on instruments from the collection of the Musée de la Musique at the Philharmonie de Paris. Barwick features analog synthesizers from the 1970s and 80s (including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5). Lattimore plays three historical harps (a 1728 model by German maker Jacob Hochbrücker, as well as a single-action Érard harp from 1799 and a double-action Érard from 1873). Lattimore also plays the tuning bells built into a Pleyel chromatic harp from 1900.
Tragic Magic is available in CD, bio-vinyl, and digital formats. Check out our cover interview with Lattimore in the July-August 2020 issue of Harp Column.
