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If you’re in the US, I would contact Marni Williams, who’s been the importer for Aoyama for many years, and ask her:
Should have mentioned that the smallness of the pedal box and the tight spacing was as disconcerting at first as the actual pedals themselves.
It’s been a long time (about 5 years) since I had the chance to play one, so things may have changed, but it was a blast to play with it, Eva. You could set it up so that some strings were percussion and some strings were bowed strings and some were winds and so on–so much fun!
The pedals did make me nervous at first, but once you get used to the difference in the motion needed it was fine.
If you ever get a chance to try one, do it! It’s wild.
You know, Christian, one of the ironic benefits I’ve found with it is that all those clients who totally can’t see why a $30K instrument has to be in the shade, they all get it immediately when I say, “But my ipad needs to be in the shade.” Zoop, off to the shadows I go, with no argument at all.
You know, Helen, I only got the ipad reluctantly, for a non-music purpose, but I can’t believe how great it is on a gig. With one of the apps for musicians (I use forScore, but there are others) you can not only replace big bag-o-tunes, but they have features like letting you set up “hot spots”, which are links within a piece, so that when you reach a da Capo or To Coda, you just tap and the music jumps to the spot you want.
Downsides: can’t see in bright sunlight, so it fails where it would be most useful, pages are a little smaller than on paper, and it’s a nuisance to get music into it, but when it’s suitable, it’s just great.
And then of course you have your tuner, your standlight, and so on with you, too, without bringing more stuff. With Square you can even swipe a credit card from a spacey bride who forgets the check.
>If you have to use sheet music, a binder with photocopied sheets in is definately the way to go.
iPad! 🙂
What a shame, Cyn. If nobody here knows of one, you might try the harplist:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/harplist/
and maybe it would be worth putting a classified in the Folk Harp Journal (not sure what it costs, but probably not too much):
Both! I’ve learned to my sorrow that if I don’t haul around the music for the stuff I play from memory, it goes something like this: forget to play memorized piece on gig, forget to play it again at next gig, eventually forget I know how to play that piece.
Fortunately, the ipad is very helpful for that sort of thing–just seeing a title in my song list reminds me to play it.
Also, while I’m sure others here are probably better at that sort of thing, when guests at a party want to sing something in a key I don’t normally do, I’m no good at all at transposing with nothing in front of me.
Thanks, Saul and Clinton.
>There is no orchestra score for the harp edition so the conductor has only a general idea what the harpist is playing.
Back when this was getting programmed a lot, most of the harpists I knew who performed it were doing their own versions, using both the Rodrigo and the Zabaleta as guides.
>No arrangment for harp by the composer cataloged in any academic library in the U.S.
No, sorry for any confusion there. The only published arrangement for pedal harp alone that I know of is the Hurst, and I believe that the Gosselin is also a solo version.
I suppose that a fair amount that was in Germany was lost, but I’m sure there’s still a lot of interesting harp music lurking around in the libraries of Europe. I’ve often wished someone would turn up that rumored Concertino by Mendelssohn, for one thing.
No US harp music dealer lists the Rodrigo transcription in their catalog now, incidentally, although I see Vanderbilt still has Zabaleta’s concerto solo version listed.
Is the Schott still available, Saul? So much of their harp catalog has been allowed to languish in recent years.
