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I carried my harp on the plane during my 2008 trip to the UK.
It fit perfectly in the carry on bin.
I don’t have any experience with the Scandinavian Airlines… But I flew with Northwest and had no problems.Mildred had a very large 8 or 10 room flat in NYC on 61st St and 1st Ave. She always had young women living with her, my mother was one of the first. Mildred introduced my mother and father and they got married. I also stayed in her flat in 1981. Here harps were so many, there was hardly room to walk, I sometimes cleaned, helped shift or just admired them. Mildred’s father invented the chocolate covered cherry and introduced it in the Paris Chocolate show in about the 1890s. This is where the family wealth came from. When Mildred’s mother had her two children, she promised herself that one daughter would play violin and the other would play the harp. Mildred is the other one. She was erudite, articulate and unimpressed by money and power of which she had a lot of it around her.
Perhaps Mildred would cringe if I say this, but she was a very objective and non-judgemental. The most bizarre experience of her professional life is when a very rich man paid her an unusually large sum to come to his home and play for him. When Mildred arrived, she realised that the man wanted her to serenade him while he made love to his girlfriend who had died. That is to say that he was engaging in necrophilia while being serenaded by the greatest harpist the modern world knows. Anyhow, she was a devout Christian Scientist and her spiritual life was important to her. Mildred got me a job as an usher at The Metropolitan Opera House so I could “get some real culture”. Later she told me the secret that the real connoisseurs sat at the score desks at the uppermost part of the building and the people who want to be seen sat in the boxes. She did not like pretension and would always knock the stuffing out of anyone with privilege who paraded their advantage.
Now, as for her distinguished harp collection. After her estate manager, Faye Dean and Ingo von Boenig were closest to her and would probably know where they went. Faye lived with Mildred until she passed away worked/works for the Rockefeller Foundation and Ingo was/is the Founder President of one of the Richard Wagner societies in NYC. I had the great privilege to visit Mildred on her death be. We grew close enough where I can say that we were like family.
BTW, the photo set at
http://music.lib.byu.edu/IHA/photogallery.html
has Mildred’s hand written notes on the back of a photograph says: “One of my long-haired drivers…” It is not me, but I did drive a great deal for her before going on to do my degree at Columbia Univ. My greatest memory is when we were driving down from Westchester County into the north tip of Manhattan. I was a little confused and she said: “Follow that Bentley, rich people never get lost.” I dutifully followed her instruction and found ourselves in midtown.
As for the harp she invented? Well, it is my understanding that she was rather badly burnt by the people involved who preferred hidden agendas.
Mildred’s only desire was “to make the harp a respect solo instrument” and she made, in my opinion, a great contribution. She didn’t take any nonsense and was very firm with people and would tell them when they were talking nonsense. She had self-possession, she came fro man era where dignity was paramount. She was a real master. Well, she still is a Master.
Hey does nancy have any recordings i could buy or some videos and do you know what harp model she had? she inspred me 2 want 2 play harp with her arrangment in i love lucy “rickys life story”
I sold my pedal harp a few years ago and bought a new ogden. It broke numerous amounts of strings within the first year and I contacted both the dealer that I bought it from and the company. After trying to fix the problem, they ended up warrantying the harp and sending me a new model of the ogden (with eyelets that should have fixed the string breakage at the sounding board), but the new model has continued to break strings and this morning one of the tuning pegs simply slipped out! I never had this much trouble with my Lyon and Healy pedal harp and am extremely disappointed.
I encourage everyone that has had problems with this harp to contact Lyon and Healy directly so they know that this model has a lot of problems and they need to do something about it! I am contacting them myself later today…
I have researched most of these teachers online and am already familiar with their backgrounds….but most of the time, this tiny sample of who they are is simply not enough.
My teacher, Ms Yoko Sung, is teaching and performing in HK. She is very experienced and systematic in teaching. she inspired me a lot !
For more information about her, pls visit:
email: yokosung@gmail.com
hi Laura,
are you still looking for one? i have a 29 string beautiful hummingbird harp for sale. please let me know if you still want one.thanks
shahin
There is now a blog available from someone watching the USA competition:
The hierarchy is:
Pratt Chamber Harp, Princessa, Debutante, Sprite (in descending order). No experience with the Debutante…just the chamber harp which is amazing–in sound, design and construction. The Sprite is the new tiny harp (lap harp) that he just designed). The Princessa is also a fairly new design. I think the Chamber Harp and the Debutante have been around for about 15 years.
Hi. I am the Executive Producer of this program. I appreciate the interesting and thoughtful comments on this forum. After reading a few postings here I thought it might be helpful if I provided some insight into how this was created.
I live in Bloomington, Indiana where I work for the local PBS affiliate WTIU. I am fortunate enough to work with a very talented producer named Susanne Schwibs. Together we devised an approach to the competition which I then “pitched” to PBS. While PBS was supportive, we did not know until last fall if the show would even air (so your calls and emails of support to PBS are VERY helpful to us for future shows–if PBS knows you are interested in this kind of programming, it makes it easier to convince them that there is an audience for that programming).
Anyway, we shot literally over 100 hours of footage (every single competition performance, including the finals). PBS would only give us a 90 minute “slot” (which was actually generous of them). This meant that we had to choose between long concert performances and “slice of life” content–I think we got the balance right.
The DVD could only be produced on a single disk, so given that the show was 89 minutes long, we could only fit an additional 30 minutes. Believe me choosing what to include was tough. The DVD is for sale now at ShopPBS.org.
But given your interest, we may be able to put some additional clips of performances online in the near future. As it is, the next competition starts in a week–the winners of the 2004 and 2007 competitions are giving free concerts in Bloomington, and at least one of the finalists is back for this year’s competition. Very exciting, indeed.
