best pop harp player

[Jerusha Amado]

Hello everyone!

I was recently asked the question, “Who is the best pop harp player?”

[catherine-rogers]

Jan Jennings is certainly one of the very best. And the late, great Verlye Mills.

[catherine-rogers]

Oh, and Robert Maxwell–how could I forget?

[carl-swanson]

There are, and have been, so many, and because their playing style is so personal and individual, I can’t use the word ‘best’ to describe any of them. I loved John Escosa, Jack Nebergal, Verlye Mills, Mimi Allen, Liza Re, of course Deborah Hansen-Conant, Park Stickney, Elenor Fell, Ray Pool, Jan Jennings, and so many others. I love them all.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Casper Reardon, and Ruth Berman Harris, to be sure. I have never heard anyone approach what they did. If their music had been available long ago, I think everyone would be playing differently. Miss Lawrence endorsed Verlye Mills in every sense.

[carl-swanson]

Gail Laughton must have been an incredible harpist too.

[kreig-kitts]

I’m not familiar with most of these names, but I don’t agree with the classification of Park Stickney

[tony-morosco]

Well,

[tony-morosco]

Sorry, I meant to say, most music is, or was, pop music at one point.

[David Ice]

Hi Kreig,

Perhaps the best moniker for Park Stickney is “eclectic”…..he plays everything from ragtime to jazz to Hawaiian ukelele music to heavy metal tunes (anybody else play tunes

[kreig-kitts]

I don’t think it’s subdivision to think that Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, and Chick Corea belong to

[john-strand]

Verlye Mills had incredible chops – Mimi Allen

[Christian Frederick]

I can’t believe that nobody mentioned the name of, what I believe to be the quintessential “pop” harpist alive,

[tony-morosco]

“I don’t think it’s subdivision to think that Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, and Chick Corea belong to

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Sorry, I must correct someone. Classical was never the pop music of its day, in our sense. There was folk music, ballads, romances and dance music all along. Familiar themes from classical music and the most famous classical pieces made it into home music-making as long as that was popular. The romance genre is the closest classical historically got to being popular, in my view. One of the most famous romances is “Plaisir d’Amour”, and if you think about the melody with a simple arpeggiated accompaniment suitable to piano, harp or guitar, you can see how it blended into pop ballads and Broadway.

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