Why do you play the harp?

[michael-rockowitz]

Hi,
My involvement had a very different basis, compared with most of the posters above.

[paul-wren]

Hi Brook, Yes I am a Louisiana Boy! An proud of it 🙂 I saw Miss Belew just before Christmas and she is doing well and still going 100 miles per hour! She knows this story very well.

[john-strand]

1952 – as a kid, I became fascinated with the sounds that Les Paul and Mary Ford were getting with the multiple guitar recording and reverb techniques – totally unlike the rest of pop music at the time – not long after that I ran across a recording of “Pink Champagne” by Robert Maxwell which was done in the Les and Mary multitrack and echo style – I was again fascinated both with the sound of the harp as well as the technical things going on – about that same time the family was stationed in London and I had the opportunity to be introduced to Maria Korchinska who was at the time the BBC harpist –

[jessica-wolff]

In college we had regular meetings in a room that contained two small Irish harps. I fell in love with the look of them and took the first opportunity to hear what they sounded like (Susan Reed concert, small Irish harp). It was years before I could afford one, a used Troubadour. In order, I’ve played guitar, harp and banjo, sometimes with long hiatuses in between, and love them all, but if you put the desert-island scenario to me, the harp would win.

[rod-c]

Hello:

I find it interesting that in virtually every case, those of us posting here were drawn to the harp the very first time we heard one being played. It is my sense that this may not

[Donna O]

While working as a nurse on an oncology unit, there was a harpist who came in and played a small lap for the patients every week.

[jennifer-byrne]

About 1968

[holly-kemble]

When I was in Junior High, I sang with a children’s chorus that occasionally performed with the Chicago Symphony. For our Christmas program one year, we performed Britten’s ‘A Ceremony of Carols’ and Lynne Turner from the CSO brought her big, beautiful harp out to Glen Ellyn to play with us.

For those of you who are unfamilliar with this piece, it was originally written for Soprano I, Soprano II, and Alto, and is accompanied only by harp.

I thought it was the most beautiful instrument I had ever seen or heard!

I had already studied piano for several years and had just started viola lessons so I could play in the school orchestra. Unfortunately, the harp was not offered. And I thought

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

There is nothing better to do.

[Maria Myers]

Saul,

Please explain your comment.

[rod-c]

Saul:

You are a distinguished harpist from all that I have read. Do tell us what inspired you to play the harp?

Rod C.

[mary-savard]

Like most of the response’s I fell in love immediately.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Sometimes I feel extinguished. As I said, there is nothing better to do. As in, nothing could be better than playing the harp. Everything is worse, lesser, coarser, cruder, lower, less interesting, less beautiful, etc.

The sound is what inspired me, the purity of it, the harmonics, the range of color, the organic act of finger flesh on string, the audibility of overtones. To me it is the music of the spheres, of God’s presence. The pure delight of Harpo in his harp.

[alexandra coursen]

What a great response; hard to follow that one!

I was a classical pianist for 25 years. I also learned to love the sound of the harp from Britten’s Ceremony of Carols (the King’s

[cynthy-johnson]

The

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