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I carry a sharpie marker in my string bag for marking the location of harmonics on the string, the more exposed/solo they are the more dots you will see on the strings which generally wear off on their own in a couple of days. I find the placement varies wildly (in my opinion) from harp to harp – where I am used to playing the harmonic on my own harp at home will be completely different for the same harmonic on the symphony’s harp!
Doesn’t anyone get good ol’ fashioned satire anymore??? It seems to be becoming a lost art….
I remember my dad speaking fondly of hearing a performance by F F Jenkins, I wish I could have been there!
P.S. I forgot to add that Maestro Fagioli actually performed on a harp entirely strung with specially treated spaghetti, the exact formula was lost during the late ’60’s… (coincidently correspondent to the advent of the hemp crop…) and that the works of Stromboli were a real hit with the spaghetti harvest crowd..”encore”..”encore”..!!! If it weren’t for that darn BBC investigation, he would still be out there at 98 yrs old strumming away…..
I recall from a music history class I took in 1989 that maestro L. Fagioli was hired to serenade the workers during the annual spaghetti harvest and was a featured performer on the final night of the “Harvest Festival”……
My husband is a trumpet player so we avoided both harps and trumpets! For the ceremony we just had organ (although he did play Trumpet Voluntary) and I have some favorite organ pieces which he was able to include (Widor’s Toccata was one).
For the entertainment during cocktails we had a local professional drama group enact the last scene (“Pyramus & Thisbe”) from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, since we were married on Midsummer’s Day, it was the perfect choice and everyone loved it!
It’s nice to think about gardening and imagine what will be fun to grow this season since the only shovel I am using right now is a snow shovel and we are expecting another 2-3 inches this evening. We don’t get moose or deer in our neighborhood luckily (some of my colleagues who live farther up the hill do) but the raccoons can be a real pain.
Being a Brit, I think gardening is in my blood! I have a huge yard with probably over 3 dozen different rose bushes – pruning season is hazardous, sometimes I look like I have been attacked by a pack of rabid cats! Come June the walk up the front path is a glorious sight and scent and my students all appreciate it. I love working in the garden and find it to be kind of a meditative experience and really grounding working over the earth.
Last year my husband’s Mom bought the house next door to us and is currently renting it out but we now have almost 1/2 an acre of land in downtown Salt Lake to take care of since her back yard was not landscaped and is a huge expanse of bare earth. We took the opportunity last summer to plant vegetables (LOTS! I got especially carried away with squash plants) and won four ribbons in the Utah State Fair agriculture division in September! We were still eating our tomatoes in December (at the end of the growing season before the first frost, pick as many green tomatoes as you want, wrap them in newspaper and store in a cool dark place, they will continue to ripen. Although they won’t be as sweet as ones picked off the vine, they still beat the store bought variety).
I ALWAYS moved my harp with the blue transport covers (esp. in a place like Scotland where rain was the norm!), I used the column cover, the front part of the base cover (it was easier to secure it to the dolly without the back piece that wrapped around the pedals) and the dust cover and then the main big blue waterproof cover over the top. I didn’t use the carpet square in the ground when loading since the front part of the base cover and the dolly was enough protection. I found the thick padding of the covers were really good at protecting the harp from dents and scrapes (the harp even fell over once at a festival when a stage crew placed it half on & half off a hydraulic stage riser and started moving it without checking all was clear – it was all wrapped up in its covers and miraculously escaped serious injury – just a little knocked out of tune!!)
Just wanted to add that it will take some practice, depending on the height of the tail gate of your wagon, you will soon figure the best distance to “park the harp” and center it from which to lay it down onto the cushions before sliding it in (with my old car it was about 2 1/2 ft) which will save you unnecessary manouvering around. Some harpists also carry around a piece of old carpet to put under the base before tipping it down onto the tailgate to save wear & tear on the feet or if the ground is particularly rough.
I would also mention that when the harp is tipped and laying up against the trunk gate (while the base is still in contact with the ground), when lifting it up to slide it in, always bend at the knees so as not to strain your lower back.
S.S, my dolly is similar in design to the white wooden L&H one, it is a 2 wheeler but with 2 straps with a short shelf for the back 2 feet of the harp only, the base strap fits through 2 metal brackets behind where the feet sit on the shelf and the top strap attaches just below the handle which can then be pulled tightly over the curve of the neck. I use it with the blue waterproof covers, mine have 2 canvas loops on either side just above the base which I could then slip the base straps through which would secure the dolly firmly to the base, (I’m not sure if the newer blue covers have these straps anymore). Anyway, I found I didn’t have to take it off the dolly when loading it into the car, it stayed on really well and I could slide it in & out using the dolly instead of the base.
I got the dolly years & years ago in the UK, I think Jim Munson had brought some up from London when he was doing regulations in Glasgow and I bought it from him, it has lasted me around 25 yrs and still works as well as it did when I bought it with the exception of the straps wearing out which were easy to replace.
I got the linoleum from a carpet/flooring warehouse, I remember that they gave it to me for free since I only needed such a small area! I also had a metal dolly from Munson & Harbour where the ledge fits just under the back feet of the harp and with 2 straps – one around the base (went through the loops on the outside of the blue padded covers) and a strap that went over the top (fit snugly around the lowest point of the curve of the neck) so I didn’t even have to take the harp off the dolly when loading it in & out of the car – even more of a timesaver!
I used to move my Salvi Diana like that when I was freelancing in Scotland many years ago, if your wagon can accommodate your harp being loaded in entirely flat like Briggsie described you could try a trick that I found very helpful. I lined the back of my wagon with a remnant of linoleum and then placed two cushions (large square & thick) on the edge of the bumper which lay under the crown/top of column and under the neck. When I lifted the base to push the harp into the car, it just slid in easily like a drawer! I left the cushions in place and when I came to unload the harp it would pull out very easily. I found it easier to load and unload the harp from the column side (heavier side) where I felt I had more control over the weight.
My second harpist here in Utah was playing at the Oregon Bach Festival last summer and got to hear Heidi & Lorna in concert, she said it was a wonderful performance and they were both amazing players. Incidentally, the composer of the title piece on their CD “Taheke”, Gareth Farr was a student at Eastman with me and he is also an accomplished percussionist as well as composer.
Here are their bios from the website. Heidi is a graduate of Eastman (she left right before I was there) & plays with Vancouver Opera, Lorna is from Ayrshire in Scotland and I knew her back in the ’80’s when we both attended the RSAMD Junior Dept. together and from youth orchestras (we both played in the Strathclyde Schools Symphony and National Youth Orch of Scotland for many years). She played in the BBC Symphony before moving to British Columbia and is a phenomenal flutist. Back when we were in high school I remember her as an amazing player and even then it was always a wonderful experience to have the opportunity to make music with her.
Just last night in fact!!!! In my dream I was playing a symphony concert in the Salt Lake Tabernacle with chorus performing some nameless piece by Vaughan Williams. My mother-in-law and a childhood friend of my husband’s had come to hear us perform and it was the most awful performance I had ever played, the choir was seriously under rehearsed and all the vocal soloists were sight reading. I arrived on stage right on the downbeat and was desperately trying to tune the harp only to have it change into a folk harp AS I was playing it! It then proceeded to keep falling over because the floor was on a slope, I then noticed I had no chair and I tried to creep off the stage as inconspicuosly as I could to notify the stage manager who I then could not find….
Gotta run and play a concert in Ogden now, hope it wasn’t deja-vu…..
Hi Audrey,
Best of Luck!!!! You’ll be fantastic, great to hear you are “gigging”, I remember doing the Ceilidhs and festivals when I was playing clarsach yonks ago, it is such a fun performance experience. You will be proud of me, this July I played a recital at the symphony’s Deer Valley Music Festival of a program of all 20thC. British harp music and decided to program a couple of selections on my clarsach (“Prelude14” by Eddie McGuire and some songs by Ronald Stevenson), I had to (embarassingly) admit to my audience that it was the first time in 25 years I had publicly performed on the clarsach, I promise it won’t be another 25 years before I do it again!
Louise
