Harping in June!

Yesterday I played the local farmer's market and we got a month's worth of rain in just a few hours!  But this is England and rain doesn't deter people so there were plenty of people to hear me and the waterproof gazebo worked just fine!

I had 8 harps in my house yesterday for our play-together.  I taught everyone The Boys of  Bluehill, someone else taught a French tune and another lady taught a jig which is also a song Follow Me Down to Carlow.

My chocolate chocolate chip muffins were a success and now I'm gearing up to our gig at Kirkstall Abbey which is on this Sunday.

Kirkstall Abbey gig went well, this time I played it with Mike and he backed up my tunes with guitar and sang some songs.  There was also a farmer's market on at the same time so that was nice since it meant more people milling around.

Summer Harping!

It is NOT my year to go to Somerset, because I hope to go to London at the end of June and visit my daughter/SIL. Nevertheless, I have a couple of things in the fire that will hopefully keep me practicing. Since I am lucky enough to be a teacher, I have these great plans every year about practicing for 2 hours every business day morning before I do anything else. But hmm, there's exercising, and gardening, and reading, and kayaking, and cooking, and general sloth involved, too. So we'll see...

Our first gig (guitar/harp duo) is as the featured act at a coffeehouse in the western part of NH. In our region of the state, there are coffeehouses in maybe 1/3 of the small towns here, and the folks that run them try to keep things scheduled so that, if you wanted to go to a coffeehouse every Friday and Saturday of the month, you could do it with no conflicts. I like going to new coffeehouses because there's so little stress - your audience has never heard your songs before, so you can play songs you've known for years! We have a pretty standard set list, which includes Squire Woods, Baptist Johnson, Swan lk 243, Ashokan Farewell, Kean O'Hara #3/George Brabazon, Sheebeg Shemore (sp!), etc, etc. We use the Sue Richard O'Carolan arrangements a lot because they're easily adaptable, harmonizable, memorizable, etc, etc.

Our second gig is a wedding at a beautiful, small chapel out in the country. We learned the S. Woods Pachelbel's Canon duet for this, as well as the Wedding March, Here's Comes You-Know-Who, etc. I like this arrangement a lot, but sometimes I have trouble in my LH stretching my fourth/third fingers from low G to D and continuing the arpeggio. I have tried changing my wrist position, flapping my fingers in especially carefully, arching perfectly, to no avail. If you ladies know what I mean and you have advice, please, speak up! About 50% of the time my fourth finger hits an adjacent string as I move up, which is driving me crazy. Yes, I could adapt the arpeggio to something that fits better under my hand, but I refuse to let this thing kick my ass!!

I also hope to spend a few Saturdays playing solo at our small town's Farmers' Market. This has seemed to help drive away my once-unconquerable stage fright. No one really seems to be paying attention, and then suddenly a family stops to ask lots of questions and give lots of compliments, and you let their kids try the strings, and I just find it really sweet. Also, the woman who runs the market - such a good older friend that people think she's my mother! - asks all the vendors to give you a small item from their table as a gift for performing for free. Now if she could just stop those motorcycles from gunning it!....One of those days will be my first public performance of O'Ferrell's (sp) Welcome to Limerick, the hardest song I've ever learned because of the trebles, which I love but am not always so great at. I don't find her advice about using your thumb as an anchor helpful one bit! Does Maeve G. use a thumb anchor? It doesn't look like she does.

I have set myself a goal of learning a song-a-week from Grainne Hambly's first book, so as soon as I'm done planning/running a talent show at my school, I'll be all about The Blackthorn Stick. Does anyone else play from this book? Do you have any favorites? I don't love her Fig for a Kiss, which is actually the first song, and I already know the S. Woods arrangement, so decided to skip it.

I'm also looking for non-Celtic music to loosen up my set list. Do you ladies have anything you recommend? So far, things I'd play in public are Ashokan, Somewhere Over the Rainbow and then the Three Easy Pieces by Grandjany.

Whoo, I've written a lot. Time to sit back and wait for your lovely ideas!
Happy harping!

June! Harp Story #3

Of course, this has nothing to do with harping, but we are hosting this little family, a bit anxiously, hoping the two little ones make it.  They are two weeks old as of today, June 6.  Double the size they were last week.  I watched them have bathing lessons today.  To die for.

So.

On with installment #3 in the Saga which I intend to drag out, if you were wondering:

#3 Carolan’s Receipt

The next chance I got (was it a day? a week?) I scampered into a store that sold CD’s, where I found Derek Bell playing mostly solo on Carolan’s Receipt.  It was all  Carolan, whoever he was.....  Of course, not knowing anything, I had no idea how lucky a find this was.   I mean no insult to anyone, but I could have, so easily, gotten ‘new age‘ not the real thing.   I like to think that that ‘made all the difference’. 

In a frenzy of anticipation (somehow I knew) I popped Derek Bell in the car CD player and sat in the parking lot listening.  The first selection was Sheebeeg Shemore. I couldn’t believe the sound of it.  It was as if all my life my ears had been waiting all for this.   I played piano and then, briefly, cello and really, there is something about the harp that is present in both of those instruments more than any others. 

Some tunes had a metallic echoing edge, others had a softer sweeter sound. I read the liner notes.  Wire strung harp?  Nylon strung harp?  Hunh?  You know how it is, you think..... I’ll have some tea..... then someone says.... what kind of tea? China? India?  Assam? Earl Grey? Green?   At that moment I had an inkling of ‘uh oh‘ there are obviously harps and harps and other harps.... like everything if you open up the magical door you step in to a bottomless pit of choices and differences and complexities...

Around then Derek Bell started to play Carolan’s Receipt and that was it.  

Exactly as described by others here, I was bowled over, knocked over the head, blown away:  I have to play this instrument.  I.have.to.  

With the small amount of rational mind left to me, I whimpered:  This is so not like me!

Next up: Enter the Paki Harp!