Harpfest

8. Edinburgh Harp Festival (Apr '04)

375 festival attendees
30 teachers and performers
15 harpmakers who brought an average of 7 harps each

Estimating one harp per attendee/teacher, an average of 32 strings per harp, that's 16,320 strings. If every string were plucked at the same time, the resultant sound wave would be heard as far away as Poland, Morocco, Svalbard and Cleveland. And would blast all the leaves from all the trees in Edinburgh.

Luckily we took turns.

My turn involved, among other things, taking two classes every afternoon, for the five main days of the festival. The first class was Advanced Jazz with Park Stickney. We learned a few jazz standards (Autumn Leaves, Take Five, Don't Get Around Much Anymore, Fly Me To The Moon) and how to arrange them with jazz chords and rhythms, how to sound like your own bass player and accompany yourself while improvising, some basic ideas for what makes good jazz improvisation, how to spice up the dulcet sounds of your harp by: bending notes (engaging the sharping levers after the string's been plucked), playing close to the soundboard to get a more strident sound, or half-engaging a sharping lever in the bass to get a gritty buzzing as the string vibrates against it. Park is arguably the best jazz harpist in the world, so just listening to him throw out suggestions for what to play and how to play it was worth the price of admission to the festival. He also played a concert on one of the evenings (each afternoon and evening there were concerts by the various teachers), held the world's largest all-harp blues jam (roughly 60 people [and harps!] in one room, all playing at once!) and just generally raised the level of playing of the people around him by breathing on them.

My second class was Harping and Carping (ie. storytelling) with Fiona Davidson. It was a good contrast to Park's class, in which I could just barely keep up with knowing what I was supposed to be doing, let alone doing it. Fiona's class was pitched at storytelling novices with mixed harp abilities, and was basically just an introduction on ways to use a harp to enhance the telling of stories. Or "How to be a modern-day bard." We did exercises with short pieces -- quotes and poems -- reading them aloud and finding tunes or sound effects or improvised melodies to accompany them. Then she performed one of her longer stories for us with the music and taught us the various tunes and motifs she used, and we practiced speaking and playing. I don't know that I'm likely to do any storytelling anytime soon, but it's something I've been curious about for a while, and Fiona is one of the few professional harp-playing bards currently living.

Other than the classes and concerts, there were a few one-off workshops on various topics, a final ceilidh (dance/party), lots of harp-tasting, socializing, music-buying, and culture-appreciation (some of us went out to a North African restaurant one evening; not something you would find on Lewis).

Another highlight was meeting Ralf Kleemann, a german harp player whose cd I'd heard, and whom I've been looking forward to meeting, but somehow our paths had never crossed before (a bit unusual since he's currently living in Ireland; and the harp world really is quite small). He turned out to be as interesting in person as through his music, and I foresee seeing more of him.

After the festival was over I stayed in Edinburgh for another few days at Patsy's house (the friend with whom I was staying; the one with the five-year-old, Jaime, who goes to the real-world equivalent of Harry Potter's school). We went to a science festival day at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens (and taught Jamie to say deoxyribonucleic acid; which I think is still coming out as "denoxy ribalo nucleoleic acid"). And yesterday we had an easter egg hunt in the garden, for which I was (willingly) drafted into creating and writing out the clues (pitched for five kids, aged 5-11, so I had to be a bit less devious than usual; but still fun).

This past week in Edinburgh was especially good, because I had been in a bit of a slump in the weeks before the festival. The music teacher training course finally got going, but it turned out to be something that's not suited for me (there's very little training; mostly it's about creating your own teaching opportunities and then getting "credit" for them towards a certificate that I don't have any need for). And I still don't know exactly where I'll be living, come May 1st. I have a few possibilities, but nothing certain yet. Plus Spring here has taken one look at the alarm clock and hit the snooze button for another couple weeks. There are signs of life (a few daffodils, one or two lambs tumbling about the legs of the sheep) but the blankets are still up around the chin and snoring can be heard.

But after soaking up the environment of all those world-class musicians I feel re-energized and full of music and happy to be back on beautiful, quiet Lewis. Actually, I feel a bit like a highland cow, in that I'll be burping up musical cud to chew on and fully digest in the weeks and months to come. (Yecch!).

Love,
Andrea

Andrea Blumberg