I tell you what: variety is in this end of year concert calendar. As 2023 winds to a close I’ve got a few concerts, each quite different from the other!
First up Nov 16 – 19 Thin Skin the movie – screening in Seattle,Los Angeles,NYC (Brooklyn) Once upon a time I was in a band and that led to another band that led to the leader adding a comedic monologue to his body of musical work. That person is Ahamefule Oluo. His Off Broadway play, Now I’m Fine, became fodder for the movie Thin Skin, now showing in three cities! Follow here for more information.
Next is a variety show: Dec 2 Bouquet Bouquet – Artist salon night of music, poetry, dance, lecture, and prose curated by poet Kary Wayson 7pm Antique Sandwich Shop 5102 N Pearl St. Tacoma, WA
Winter Solstice shopping: Dec 21 Solo Harp Everett Mall – I will be playing harp next to Santa 1402 SE Everett Mall Way, Everett, WA 98208
I’m excited to offer two in person workshops coming up in October at Dusty Strings Music School in Seattle (Fremont). Both of these group classes are for the beginner to intermediate harpist.
Sat, Oct 7 – Introduction to Harp Therapy More and more, harpists are lending their hearts and talents to playing healing music, as well as seeking certification to play at the bedside from accredited programs recognized by the National Standards Board of Therapeutic Musicians. In this class, you’ll explore effective styles, modes, and songs to benefit your repertoire, as well as what kind of training you’ll need to play music in health-care facilities.
Skills Needed: For the advanced beginner to intermediate-level player. You should have base of songs you know and a desire to learn new styles for therapy harp. This workshop is designed for those new to therapeutic harp, as well as those in certification programs. It does not certify you to play music at the bedside, but you will learn tools from a Certified Clinical Musician and gain access to references and resources to enrich your harp therapy journey.
Sat, Oct 21 – Three Celtic Strains Join this class for a fun, creative approach to learning more about harp! Irish music tradition recognizes Three Noble Strains, or styles, of playing harp—joy, sorry, and sleep. In this workshop, you’ll learn what these strains are, what they mean, and how to apply them to harp music. You’ll participate in a Celtic Circle of Song, which focuses on chord progressions and playing freely, and add new tunes to your repertoire.
Skills Needed: For the advanced beginner to intermediate-level player. You should have base of songs you know and a desire to broaden your musicality. You do not need to know how to read music, though knowledge of chord charts and some notation is handy.
Harp is an instrument synonymous with peace and love. Harp also soothes and heals, alleviating emotional grief, physical distress, anxiety, and exhaustion. As a harpist, I enjoy offering funeral music for clients who have lost a loved one. I’ve studied the musical styles and songs that work well in the situation of death, such as ambient music. I can also play music that fits your family’s individual requests.
I have written compositions for the intention of creating peace of mind and healing. This relaxing style of music, by nature, helps to alleviate grief, stress, and other emotions associated with coping with death. Also, I have arranged a collection of Hildegard von Bingen’s songs, who was a Medieval plant medicine healer, spiritual leader, artist, musician, and composer.
I am always glad to accommodate requests of the family as best as I can within the time frame of the event. For a traditional church memorial, I may be asked to play hymns, like “Into the Garden,” or “Amazing Grace,” as well as accompany a vocalist. For a modern request, I have played songs by Sting and Michael Jackson at a memorial, because those songs were favorites of the deceased. Cultural folk songs might also be another request if the person was an immigrant or felt close to their ethnic heritage.
Sometimes though, it is best to play non-familiar songs for the sake of a family’s grief, particularly if the cause of death was tragic. In this case, songs that serve more as background music are better, because they conjure up less of an emotional reaction at a time that might already be too difficult for loved ones to bear. When this is the situation, I play ambient non-familiar music to be as soothing as possible, as I would in a hospital or hospice – a skill I learned as Certified Therapeutic Musician.
Gravesite burials are something I enjoy playing harp for when I am able to, and when weather allows. I have a very small harp that I use in these moments, but I can also bring my 34 string folk harp in the summer months. For many funerals, I have played harp at both the indoor memorial, and graveside location back-to-back on the same day, a scenario that works well at a traditional funeral home with attached cemetery.
Plenty of people don’t want religious music at a funeral, and I have repertoire for them too. I am quite comfortable with traditional and non-traditional situations around death. I know how to seamlessly weave songs together if there is to be an event with little to no speaking.
I have been studying funeral music since 1995 when I played church organ at the funeral of a friend’s father, and I have been studying music much longer. Since 2012 I have studied and worked as a therapeutic musician, so that I can provide music as an in-person healing modality.
Places where I have experience and training to play harp music for death and dying:
Bedside vigil of someone actively passing on
Hospital and Hospice care
Group memorial ceremony (for funeral home or healthcare organization)
Individual memorial (in funeral home or columbarium)
Gravesite burial
Funeral home wake/visitation
Celebration of life
Combination of funeral home ceremony + gravesite relocation
Previously posted (May 10, 2021), this article has been published in Harp Therapy Journal vol. 28, No. 2 Summer 2023
There are many ways to make your practice session more meaningful. I’m going to suggest five methods to make your practicing at music a healing process. A good way is to get started with an open mind. Begin with no worries of mistakes, for that will paralyze you from the get go. Besides, mistake are a part of life, we all make them, so you might as well just stay positive. Best to start with some advice from Benjamin Franklin, “Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”
Let Go
I love hearing and watching a student play through a song in its entirety for the first time during a private harp lesson. As I listen, I’m also watching for other details.That initial play-through, shows a musician’s excitement or nervousness, where the smooth parts and the rocky parts are in the song for them, and how they physically play, hopefully moving in a flow and not being stiff.
During a recent Zoom lesson with an adult student, I noticed that she was holding her breath. To a teacher, this is nothing new. As a young student myself I did this, along with crunching up my face, in concentration. Sometimes, when we focus on one area of the body, like our hands, when we make music, we might stiffen up other “unused” areas of the body, like our face or back. The illusion is that we actually are using all of our body to play.
After the student finished playing, she asked me how she could improve. She was at the point in practicing where she was getting the notes correct and playing with dynamics, but there was something missing. I asked, “Are you holding your breath?”
The harp is a beautiful instrument. The harp is also an impractical instrument. I should know. I had to buy a smaller harp when I had my second child, just so I could fit my whole family in the car with my instrument at the same time! Of course I think it is worth it. The harp is ancient, dreamy, and relaxing. It calls to many musicians and non-musicians. For over thirty years I have been gravitated to it’s magical call.
For these overly-practical times, these ship-sinking-times, I want to watch escapist movies like La La Land. When the pandemic hit, and I was making Harp Escape videos a little more frequently, I wanted to pay tribute to the wonderful soundtrack Justin Hurwitz created for this romantic story that payed homage to the Golden Age of film.
City of Stars (from La La Land)
Harp Escape is a series of videos and recordings dedicated to relaxing and calming music. One of my biggest goals of Harp Escape is to bring a breath of relaxation into your environment. Because we are living in such an unusual time, stress levels can be high. It is difficult to plan, and life can be downright hopeless feeling some days. Therefore, it is essential for us to take breaks throughout the day and, as I like to say, floss your ears. For more Harp Escape videos and music, visit YouTube and Patreon.
We have added more items up in my Harp Escape Shop! If you didn’t see the 30 day Instagram challenge I did in Feb/Mar you might have missed this gorgeous illustration by Stephen Schildbach. Harp Nouveau was inspired by Aubry Beardsley’s art (but I suppose also being married to me)! Now, you too can own a beautiful cotton tote bag with this lovely harp art nouveau design. $20
Harp Nouveau Tote Bag $20
For harpists, I have sheet music for sale. With the song “What the River Says/Aer Enim” you get two for the price of one. Both pieces are arranged for lever and/or pedal harp. This sheet music is for the intermediate harpist in the key of Eb (folk harpers will have to do some extra tuning for this!). This sheet music is for sale for $8.
My tune “What the River Says” is based on the Wm. Stafford poem, Ask Me. The second song, seamlessly merged with the first, was composed by Hildegard von Bingen. If you aren’t familiar with her work, she lived most of her life during the 12th Century, and is considered by many to be the first female composer of Western music. Born in Germany in 1098, Hildegard von Bingen composed music, wrote poetry, and also wrote several books about religion, art, politics, philosophy, science, medicine, and herbs.
This is just the first of many Hildegard von Bingen songs made available to you. I’m arranging an entire collection of her songs for lever harp, coming out next year by Mel Bay Publishing! Some students and friends may already know this. And chances are if you’ve hired me to play a memorial service or quiet ritual, you have heard me play one of these. As I complete working on the book, I’ll be sharing more with you.
What the River Says / Aer Enim Sheet Music (4pgs) $8
And speaking of writing a book… I’ve recently had a poem published! April is National Poetry Month after all, and it feels like a good time to share this. The lengthy title, Poem for My Unborn Boy at the Ballard Locks One Day Before His Birth, (published by Literary Mama) sums up the theme of the poem quite thoroughly. For anyone who has waited for the birth of their child, my go-to technique to get moving 5years ago with my son, was walking stairs at the Locks, over and over again.
The Harp Escape Shop will be undergoing more transformation in the coming months. Feel free to contact me if you run into any bumps in the process.
I played my first wedding ceremony while I was in high school, for young friends in love who hired me to play Pachelbel’s Canon on harp. It was a traditional church wedding, and since then, I can estimate I’ve played over 500 weddings. It certainly is something I enjoy offering to others and I feel honored to be invited to play music for these ceremonies.
The first thing I always ask my clients when they are choosing wedding music is: what is the general feel of your wedding? A wedding theme can help a bride and groom pick out songs, and it can help me better understand who they are as a couple. Is the ceremony rustic? Is it upscale? Boho? A traditional church ceremony? Is there a cultural theme?
Answers to these questions help narrow in the vibe that the music will create. A rustic farm wedding might call for Americana or Irish folk songs. An upscale downtown hotel might call for classical pieces or jazz. A traditional church wedding will likely involve Bach and pieces you might think of synonymous with weddings (Here Comes the Bride/Bridal March) as well as religious. Finally, a culturally themed wedding will include songs from that nationality or region of the world. For instance, a Chinese wedding might include old world folk songs like Cherry Blossom, with a modern flair like video game songs, or movie theme music. For a traditional Indian wedding, I improvised a lot in Eastern keys.
The next question I ask a couple, and perhaps more obvious, is what kind of music do you like?
Volume 7 of Harp Escape features two traditional Irish songs in a therapeutic harp style: Banish Misfortune and The Parting Glass. Therapeutic music is an art based on the science of sound. It it typically slow and simple, for easy listening. For the past decade, I’ve been focusing much of my time on soothing music of this nature. As a Certified Clinical Musician, I have played music at the bedside for over 500 patients in outpatient dialysis clinics; general hospital; skilled nursing facilities; and for hospice.
Harp Escape is a series of videos and recordings dedicated to relaxing music. Therapeutic music is preferably played in-person (to adjust to in-the-moment responses of patients and caregivers). However, remote harp therapy can still be enjoyable! The Harp Escape series is calming harp music stylized to: relieve pain, release anxiety, diminish nausea, and stabilize heart rate. Healing harp music has also been shown to improve sleep and calm the environment.
In this volume, I’ve slowed down a traditional Irish jig, Banish Misfortune. (Jigs are typically an upbeat dance tune in 6/8.) Here, the song has been slowed down in the therapeutic style and partnered with another Irish tune, The Parting Glass. Fun fact (according to thesession.org): Banish Misfortune has other names: The Horse Under The Stairs, The Little Bag Of Meal, Mammy’s Horse Is Dying, The Mangled Badger, The Stoat That Ate Me Sandals, and my favorite: The Whore Amongst The Nettles Roaring.
Banishing misfortune with a little harper.
I was originally called to play this song because of its well-known name, rather than its melody. Though I had heard it before, I really got into playing Banish Misfortune during lockdown of the pandemic. I thought that by playing a song of this name I could dispel some of the negative things happening in the outer world. It gave me some personal power while playing it, and made me feel hopeful.
I invite you as well to meditate on good fortune as you listen to this version.
For the musician out there, this tune is in D Mixolydian mode. So, it is in the key of D with two sharps; however, the root is not on do (D). Instead, the root is on sol (G). Starting on the fifth of the scale (sol) would be called Mixolydian mode. The result is upbeat and refreshing sounding. I like to play Banish Misfortune syncopated, so it has a sort of Grateful Dead feel.
Goodwill in this recording extends into the second song, The Parting Glass, which has lyrics that reflect a night well-spent with friends. The first stanza is:
In the summer of 2020, at the beginning of the Pandemic, one of the first things I noticed in the city, was how quiet things suddenly felt. Air traffic decreased greatly. My house, positioned in North Central Seattle, had been a major flight path to Sea-Tac Airport at particular times of day. I always noticed increased activity between 9-11pm, because that is when I liked to record! Many times, I would have to adjust my schedule, because it was too loud. But once the Pandemic hit, the nights became perfectly still, even in the middle of the city. During the mornings, sea planes would land on nearby Lake Union. This sound also decreased for some months. Suddenly, there was a lot less noise coming out of the sky, and subtle sounds stood out more: bird calls, neighbors walking by. A Pandemic way of hearing was appreciating the certain new quietude. However, with the noiseless nights came some discomfort, about what was going on in our world.
Listen Up! There are many ways of hearing.
Then, as the summer heated up, other sounds took prominence: frequent emergency vehicles and police sirens. I noticed increased helicopter activity and during BLM protests, and more than once I heard SPD fire flash bang grenades as I lay in bed, coming from across the hills from nearby Capitol Hill. There were stories in those sounds. I imagined the Pike/Pine corridor, city streets I knew so well in my old neighborhood, and I imagined the fighting. Later, in the morning, real images on the news joined the sounds I had heard. But as I lay in bed, I felt the whole city, and the whole country, listening to what those sounds meant. I felt many ears listening to the troubles around us, and I had difficultly sleeping.
Diversity is the spice of life. My client list is a wide range, from getting hired directly by corporations, to nurses & doctors, couples getting married, playing for hospital patients, in department stores, at transit centers, farm events, before city hall leaders, in historic hotels, for humanitarian non-profits, and GRAMMY winners. Over the last 20 years, I feel fortunate to have met so many people, to have collaborated on events with them, to help create an event where there wasn’t one, or one that needed help planning.
