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I heard her play this piece in New York last year. She’s an awesome harpist. But I have to say that that particular piece of Bach just doesn’t work on the harp. It’s a poor choice to transcribe for harp. There is a video of her on youtube playing the Carnival of Venice variations by Posse which is truly magnificent.
Tony- My how times have changed. Years ago when Mildred Dilling would ship a harp to me for repair, she would always include in her first payment a few extra dollars to tip the driver. That used to be the way. I don’t know when it changed.
Another thing you could do is point to someone near the smoker, preferably an elderly person, and tell the smoker that that person has emphysema but is too embarrassed to ask him to stop smoking, so could he/she please move away from the crowd to smoke? That way you come across as the good guy.
Maybe you could politely say to them,” Actually sir, the smoking area is over there” pointing to someplace down wind of you. If he or she says that it’s not marked, just say that the venue doesn’t like to put up signs and leaves it to the staff to “help” people.
Are you playing a gliss on a lever or pedal harp? There are infinite variations in the structure of gliss’s, mostly on pedal harp. The gliss should be spelled out. Usually the first octave is written out to show you the position of each note, then the squiggly line follows up to a written out top(or bottom) note.
If you want to read more about the problems of traveling around the world with a harp, go to my company web site, http://www.swansonharp.com, click on the ‘articles’ page, and read the article, Traveling with the New York Harp Ensemble. That will give you an idea of what you’re in for.
A paper from Customs is not enough. That simply means that the harp originated from the United States for example. The country you are trying to bring the harp into needs either a bond, which you buy from a broker before leaving your country, or you have to give customs of the country your are visiting all of the money that you would have to pay if you sold the instrument in that country. You then have to prove that the harp is leaving that country(at the time it leaves) and apply to get the money you paid back. And you will probably have to wait a year or more to get the money. Some countries require you give customs 100% of the value of the instrument to enter the country!
You’d better check with the consulate of each country you’re going to be in to see what documentation you need to get the harp into that country. Maybe just checking with the EC rules will take care of it. Most countries and the EC are going to assume you’re bringing the harp into the country to sell it, and they want to be sure they get their taxes and tariffs up front. So you either have to buy a bond from an American company that proves that they will get paid if you sell the harp in the country, or you have to pay a huge percentage of the value of the harp when entering the country. And good luck getting any of it back if you don’t sell the harp. They make it as difficult as possible to get a refund. You’re much better off trying to arrange to use a harp already in Europe.
Thanks Kay and Basel. The compliments are very appreciated. I had hoped when Basel got the first harp-generously donated by a woman who had several harps and wasn’t using this one anymore- that it would be his vehicle into the professional career that he was fully trained for. That’s exactly what happened. And like any professional harpist, he really needed a second instrument. I became aware of another Venus going up for sale and the owner was willing to let it go at a price Basel could afford, so he bought it and had it shipped to Syria. So now he can function like the professional harpist he is.
Thanks guys for these suggestions. I’m old enough so I don’t know any of these things. Keep the suggestions coming!
-I really doubt that the big harpmakers have outsourced their actions oversees.-
Maria- Ask Lyon & Healy where their main action parts are made, and where their main actions are assembled? Also, where is their linkage made, and spindles, pedal bars, pedal couplers and coupler screws, action couplers, discs, and back plate screws. Ask them where their linkage is riveted together. Ask them if the main action of a Lyon & Healy harp is the same main action used on a Salvi harp. Ask them if the action used on all the Lyon & Healy semi-grand harps is in fact a Lyon & Healy action, or if it is a Salvi action that says Lyon & Healy on the front plate. I’ll be curious to see what they tell you.
Tony- There is a basic rule in business(which I NEVER adhered to) that says: If no one is complaining about a fault in the product you are selling, and it’s not affecting sales, then there is no reason to fix it. So many products stay on the market with very obvious problems, and until the day that sales slump because of this problem, the company won’t do anything about it. My mention above of screws from China is a typical example.
A more odious example is that of the Ford Pinto in the 1960’s or ’70’s, where Ford KNEW that the gas tank, positioned at the back of the car, could cause anyone in the car to be burned to death if the car was in a rear end collision. But they calculated the cost of changing the design and compared it to the cost of law suits that would come from the accidents resulting in death that they would have to face, and decided it was cheaper to leave the gas tank where it was and pay the occasional lawsuit. In a landmark case against Ford, the jury in one such law suit awarded the victim’s family a stupefying judgement, explaining that the award was twice what Ford had calculated they would have to pay, thereby sending a message that leaving a known faulty design in place would cost much more than changing the design.
In the case of harps. as long as the faulty part is not causing a slump in sales, the company won’t bother to fix it or change anything about how they have their parts made.
Jerusha- I’ve recently stopped using standard screws that are available at big hardware stores because they are all made in China and the heads keep breaking off. Now I use stainless steel screws because stainless steel is so much harder and I never have a problem with the heads breaking. This is what I mean about using the wrong material to make a product. The Chinese are very good at making a product look like it has been made correctly when in fact it has not. And the trouble starts later when it’s much more difficult to do anything about it.
