WHAT a conference!!!!

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

The AHS conference was really amazingly good. If you haven’t heard Isabelle Moretti play live, you really should sometime.

Thanks to all the AHS people who had anything to do with organizing and working at the conference. I really appreciated all the work and the end result was just wonderful.

Briggsie

[carl-swanson]

What did Moretti play?

[jennifer-buehler]

What were you’re favorite workshops and why?

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

Carl, Moretti played:

Danses hongroises du 17eme siecle by Farkas

Sonata K.V. 330 by Mozart

Rondeau sur le trio ziti, ziti du Barbier de Sivelle de Rossini by Bochsa

Bamyan by Hersant

Le Rossignol by Liszt (trans. by Renie)

Asturias by Albeniz

Fantaisie Op. 12 sur l’Opera Faust de Gounod by Zabel

A piece by Faure, whose title I can’t recall, a second encore piece whose title she didn’t give, and which I had never heard — a light cute piece, and Eleanor Plunkett by O’Carolan

Briggsie

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

Thanks for your comments on my new little harp. I played it most of the day yesterday, tuning it a LOT and it sounds remarkably well in tune today. 🙂

My favorite workshop was the assessment by the DMC physical therapist who observed me play and worked on some improvements to my back while sitting and some other tension points I didn’t need, because it is something I can apply.

The meditation/yoga…..because I need both and will pursue both.

I also liked the panel discussion on performance medicine as applied to harp playing. It was interesting. Elizabeth Volpe-Bligh was on the panel, as well as Erzbieta Gaal, 2 p.t.s and a D.O., and it was moderated by Kerstin Allvin (my teacher).

Briggsie

[carl-swanson]

Briggsie- Moretti is such a wonderful harpist. I first heard her at the Baton Rouge Conference years ago and was a little annoyed that she played almost all standard repertoire for that recital. Stuff that you can hear on any senior recital. She played as an encore a wonderful piece by Tournier called The Eternal Dreamer, which she did not announce and which everyone asked me at the reception what it was(I didn’t know). This program that you heard sounds much more interesting and I’m sorry I missed it. Marie-Claire Jamet played the Farkas Hungarian pieces at the Boston Conference in 1994. They’re beautiful. I suspect that Moretti, like Marie-Claire, played selections from that collection rather than the whole thing, because it consists of maybe 15 short pieces. Most of the other pieces on this program I don’t know, and for me that makes the program much more interesting. I wonder if the Faure piece was Une Chatelaine en sa Tour… which she played in Baton Rouge. If it is, she’s a very brave woman. that piece is very tricky to perform, particularly from memory. Le Rossignol is one of my favorite pieces in the whole repertoire, and also one of the most difficult. I would have loved to hear her play that.

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

Carl, she plays with such freedom and beauty of tone and such marvelous musicality. She played the Faure Impromptu at the very end. She said she meant to put it on the program but there was some sort of misunderstanding on the phone when they were asking about her pieces.

The Farkas…..I’m not sure how many she played. I didn’t count them because I was so entranced with her music. I want to say maybe 8 or 9 of them? They are really nice, too. She is a very brave woman……..she goes all the way in creating music….no holding back. She just lets it rip. I admire that. It was really very warm in there that day too….and there was a terrible thunderstorm raging which at one point made the lights go off and then on again. She did not miss a beat.

I could’ve listened to her play for hours longer. She takes you into the music with her.

Briggsie

[Elizabeth Volpé Bligh]

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

Hi Elizabeth! It was so good to finally meet you after reading a lot of what you have written over the past couple of years. I learned a lot about playing harmonics from just reading some of what you have written here. You are a really nice lady.

I DID enjoy the panel discussion, but unfortunately I had to take off early and missed about 20 minutes at the end. I was helping Kerstin for the entire conference, and just had to go here and there. Most of the workshops I was able to stay, but that was a really busy morning. If you could email the handout, I would really appreciate it.

YES on Park Stickney. Wasn’t that amazing? I loved it all too. I’m wondering if that great big Salzedo harp Judy Loman played was the same one that was in the L&H display. I assume she had her own harp, but I just wonder. I also liked all the kids playing in ensemble. That was trés cool! It was also fun to hear the harp I take lessons on occasionally playing in the chamber music recital. You know, when Calvin Stokes’ group played “Contusion” I almost felt like I was just a part of the music….in the music itself. The same thing happened on a couple of the Moretti pieces. That’s really good stuff.

Briggsie

[Elizabeth Volpé Bligh]

As far as I know, that was Judy’s own harp that she played. What a sound!

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

It surely did sound wonderful.

[Jerusha Amado]

Gee, you guys are making me feel bad that I couldn’t attend!

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

I really don’t know Jerusha. Everything seemed to have been video’d, but whether they are going to make a general dvd of it, I don’t know.

I was really lucky that it was local to me this year. And the fact that it was really about healthy harping made it all the better for me.

Briggsie

[catherine-rogers]

In the past it was standard practice for all the concerts (and I believe the workshops, too) to be recorded for archival purposes and the recordings were available for loan from the AHS archives, much like a library. I remember getting a list of available recordings years ago and borrowed an audio tape of Dorothy Remsen giving a presentation about playing in a recording studio. I don’t know if visual recordings are available. I know highlights of one of the pop/jazz festivals were sold in DVD format because a friend gave me one. It does take some time after the conference to get all that stuff edited so it may be a while before they are available.

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