My son's performance…

[avdhoeven]

Recently I stumbled into this great harp forum. I really like the information I find here and the knowledge being shared here. I’m from the Netherlands and it’s nice to see people enjoying this lovely instrument. I myself play the flute and my son plays the harp.

When he was 4 years old he always said he wanted to play the harp. When he became 6 and kept saying this we decided it became time to take some action. We found a great harp teacher who was willing to give him the chance to see if he could start playing the harp.

I still remember that only after about 2 months he looked into the music book he got from the teacher and said he wanted to play the Brian Boru March. She gave him the chance and within two weeks he learned himself this piece.

Recently he gave one of his first solo performances during a big harp concert of his teacher, where he played the Pavane of Fauré. Here he was having lessons for about 1,5 years (believe me, he was nervous 🙂 ).

About two weeks ago we started playing together with some flute/harp pieces and he’s know playing the accompaniment together. That’s really great to play together with your son…

A proud father 🙂

[Gretchen Cover]

Your son looks exactly like mine at that age. What a wonderful performance. You have every reason to be a proud father. I hope the music interest will continue and you have years of playing duets together.

[Sid Humphreys]

Wow!

[avdhoeven]

Thanks. We bought this week a Merlin for him to play on in the future. It’s now being checked and tuned in the store. Looking forward to that one…

[bettyblue16]

Well done to him! I wish I had started that young!

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

He should be with a teacher who will teach him good technique now. It is time for him to learn to play well. He is very musical and should have a strong foundation, and a small pedal harp. He is picking at the strings. Why have him need to unlearn his habits when he is older? A child should not make up their own way to play. If that is how his teacher plays, yikes.

[avdhoeven]

Thanks! He really has a very good teacher (well known here) that is working hard on learning him his technique. He’s very learnable, but also a bit stubborn 🙂 He’s progressing day by day and certainly not learning himself. But the issue is that he has a very strong feeling for playing the harp so he did learn himself partly, and that’s unavoidable, because when he sees the music he just starts to play it 🙂 So technique certainly is high on the priority list now. At this moment we are working together on Pachelbel’s Canon to play it together with me on flute.

A pedal harp is out of range at this moment for us, but it certainly is on the list for the future.

[balfour-knight]

Thanks for posting this wonderful video! Technique will come along naturally for Davy as he progresses with his excellent teacher. Also, he can learn very well on the Merlin lever harp and then you all can decide if a pedal harp is in his future. There are many great lever harpists out there who never play pedal harp.

My very best wishes to all of you,
Balfour

[Biagio]

That’s wonderful – both Davy’s playing and that you two play together! To follow up on Balfour’s comment – true indeed and there are a number of excellent lever harpers who were outstanding pedal harpists but changed for one reason or another. A good friend is one of those – professional harpist and teacher who switched to lever harp when she inherited a Rydecki. Then her husband made her a wire strung and she fell in love with that. Now they play wire strung and French horn together in concert. Quite a combination!

As Davy gets older you may find that the harp collection increases!

Kind regards,
Biagio

[avdhoeven]

Thanks! I’m sure the collection will increase. His teacher already said to start saving money for the future for a pedal harp 🙂 But that’ll take some time I guess.

This is him playing on his new Merlin:

He’s so happy with it.

[balfour-knight]

Thanks for letting us hear Davy play the new Merlin! It sounds really nice. His left hand technique, in particular, is improving tremendously as he gets more used to plucking the strings–less wrist movement and more snapping the fingers into the palms. His hands will get very strong as he grows. Just remind him to always be supple, advice from the great Henriette Renie!

In regard to all the lever flips (changes), I know many adult harpists who are afraid to change levers during a piece, so Davy is very adept at that! Bravo to this fine young man!

With best regards,
Balfour

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