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I would recommend Fay Seeman, who teaches in your area at Northern Illinois University and I think Wheaton College.
Yes, a student in her upper 20s auditioned for me once and asked if she could be considered professional, and considering that her tempo and rhythm fluctuated willy-nilly, I had to say no.
Good harp teachers may charge as little as $40 a lesson and as much as over $100, so $50 is aiming toward the low end, just so’s you know. You may get it a little less by taking a shorter lesson.
He was part of the glorious first classes of Carlos Salzedo, along with Lucile Lawrence, Florence Wightman, Edna Phillips, Alice Chalifoux, Flora Greenwood and several others like William “Tippy” Cameron (“Sister Bill loves to dance” Miss Lawrence quoted.) He played in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, then moved to New York and started swinging, then died young and suddenly of an undiscovered tumor or cancer or something like that, breaking a lot of hearts. He left a composition behind, in addition to Young Man with a Harp, which I believe Calvin Simmons has, which is in the archives of the Curtis Institute of Music.
What price, and what is the design like? I’ve only seen perhaps more recent ones with straight handles, sheeps wool padding, hard wheels.
If you are into making harp dollies, would you be interested in developing or copying another design?
Here are some other solo numbers he recorded:
1]Red McKenzie – “Mean to Me” 12/28/33 IAJRC
2] Jack Teagarden – “Stars Fell on Alabama” 12/18/34 Br
3] Bob Terry – “It’s Been So Long” 01/15/36 Decca
4] Three T’s – “You Turned the Tables On Me” [with Adele Girard] 12/04/34P.S., I was just about your age when I started, the beginning of my sophomore year, and I’d give anything to have started just one year earlier, so don’t waste any time and get started as soon as you can.
I know how you feel. Omaha is a lot like Minneapolis was when I wanted to play the harp at your age. There are lots and lots of men who play the harp professionally and otherwise. There is nothing innately feminine about the instrument, it’s what you bring to it or out of it, if that’s your concern. If you’re concerned about peer pressure, don’t be, or have a response prepared, like, “It’s a great way to meet girls” or some such pap. Douglas Rioth is principal harp of the San Francisco Symphony, Richard Turner is with the Winnipeg orchestra, Ed Druzinsky retired from the Chicago Symphony, Dan Levitan is in Bay area orchestras, and more. If you want to look for a male teacher in the future, if there are none in Omaha, you’ll be able to find several qualified teachers around the country.
The fact that harps may be golden and heavily decorated does not make them feminine, there is nothing innately feminine about decorative art or gold leaf. Basically, a harp is in itself
The only time I have ever seen harp harmonics written with a diamond-shaped note are when they are the harmonics of the twelfth. Clifford Wooldridge unfortunately introduced a diamond-shaped note to clumsily indicate the octave where they are played in his “edition” of Salzedo’s Variations Sur Un Theme dans le style ancien.
If harp harmonics are only notated where they are played, then how can you indicate that it is the twelfth or another harmonic to be produced rather than the octave? One would have to invent yet another notation.
Unfortunately, musical notation is not all about convenience, it is based on tradition and logic and whims of publishers and composers. Salzedo was right to change the notation to make it consistent with other instruments, and to put the emphasis on how it sounds. Perhaps he found he got better results from his students that way. I know that a lot of harpists have not mastered the craft of playing great harmonics.
Salzedo did create a new view of the harp,
I haven’t had too much trouble as I can’t abide poor tone, and have my ways to get results. I tend to compare it to voice production, if that’s any help. There are mental blocks one has to deal with, to be certain. I’ll be happy to help anyone who can get to Philadelphia.
That’s the challenge, I was thinking of only doing inner voices. I find it impossible to compose a melody to an existing bass line. The soprano always wants to go its own way, won’t cooperate, except for a section in my Nocturne that worked out with an ascending bass line. Still, I think if you avoid leaps of more than a major sixth, it should help. I would do the soprano first using chord tones of the bass (are you given figured bass at all?), then apply my rule to the alto and tenor. No figured bass, you’re on your own. Never had to do that.
