Harpist of the Month of May (Yes, I'm Aware that it's June): Mikaela Davis!

Yeah, I know. I’m still playing catch-up. 

Mikaela Davis is a very multifaceted musician. Besides being a classically trained harpist, she is also a folk harpist/singer/songwriter with a band. Next year, Mikaela will be a senior harp performance major at the Crane School of Music (where I went to college!). 

Mikaela was lucky enough to go to one of the few public schools to offer harp lessons, which is how she got started. She says one of the things that inspired her to choose the harp was the death of her grandmother. “My Oma had just passed away that year, and I thought, if I play the harp in the living room, she can listen to me.” Mikaela began harp lessons in third grade and was first taught by a music teacher at school before switching to take lessons with Grace Wong, the principal harpist with the Rochester Philharmonic. Now at Crane, she studies with Dr. Jessica Suchy-Pilalis.

Mikaela started writing songs for an enrichment class that she took in middle school. She started on the piano (her early efforts, she says, sounded like Vanessa Carlton) before switching to write for the harp. “My friend’s dad gave me a cd of Joanna Newsom, and I was like oh - why aren’t I doing that?”

The first band that she played in was a duo she started in high school with a friend who played the ukelele. Calling themselves The Girls, they mostly played at informal locations like the Rochester Public Market. After The Girls broke up, she started writing and performing on her own. “I actually didn’t want a band, originally,” she says. “I did solo stuff for a while, and then I was showing my songs to Alex Cote (the band’s drummer), and he said ‘oh, you should add bells on some of your songs!’ He started playing shows with me and he would literally just play glockenspiel. And then he said 'you should add kick drum and snare,’ so it kind of added on really slowly. And then two years ago we added guitar, so then it was full drumset, bells, and guitar." 

Because at school she is always practicing classical music, Mikaela says this has influenced the way she writes the harp parts for her songs. "When I write a song it won’t be just chords, I’ll put some depth in the harp parts. Sometimes when I write a part, I have to practice it a little bit!”

Mikaela and her band released their first album almost a year ago, which you can find on her Bandcamp site as well as on iTunes (my favorite song happens to be “Something Better”). You can also listen to more of her music on her YouTube channel.

Her current band includes herself on harp and vocals, Alex Cote on drumset, and Cian McCarthy on guitar and sitar (both Alex and Cian go to SUNY Purchase), and they have been playing together for about a year. They have at least six new songs (such as “I Wouldn’t,” “Don’t Want Another Love,” and “Feels like Forever”),  as well as a cover of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” (which is awesome). These are not on the album, so you’ll have to see them live in order to hear them (although there are plans to record an EP soon)!

(From left to right: Cian, Mikaela, Alex).

Mikaela has one foot in the classical world and one in the world of indie music, and she says she loves to play both styles. She is more than capable in both areas - she recently won the Crane Concerto Competition and performed Pierne’s Concertstuck with the Crane Symphony Orchestra. When she is finished with school, she says, she wants to focus on her band, but will continue to play classical music. 

Her plans for the immediate future are for her senior recital, which will included pieces like Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro (a personal favorite of mine), Salzedo’s Scintillation (which she played in the Crane Honors Recital this past year), and Casella’s Sonata for Harp. She also has a full schedule of gigs for her band this summer, including shows in Rochester and yet-to-be-announced tour dates throughout the northeastern United States. 

In Rochester, NY:

Friday, June 21st - Lovin’ Cup, 9pm

Thursday, July 11th - Hochstein at Highfalls, 12:10

Saturday, July 13th - Corn Hill Arts Festival on Avery Stage, 3pm

Friday, July 26th - Bug Jar, 10pm

Keep checking her Facebook page for more events this summer. Thanks for talking to me, Mikaela!

April Harpist of the Month: Kristina Finch!

(First of all let me just say that playing for Street Scene was AMAZING.  It was so much fun and was absolutely the best way to spend my birthday weekend).  

Last Monday, I went to hear harpist Kristina Finch give a lecture recital.  Kristina is a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, and the intrepid leader and TA of the Eastman harp studio.  Before becoming a DMA student here, she attended Florida State University for her master’s degree, and was also at Eastman for her bachelor’s.  

First I asked Kristina how she got into the harp.  "I started playing when I was eight years old.  My elementary school music teacher was a harpist.  She chose a group of us - I don’t really know what criteria she used to choose us - but she chose six girls, and sent us home with little sheets to have our parents sign.  I don’t think my parents had any idea what they were getting into, but the school rented a harp and we all shared it… Honestly I don’t remember having a desire, before I was asked, to play the harp.  I don’t know that I even thought of it.“  

About six months after she started, an anonymous donor gave money for the school to buy the harp, and the program grew very quickly from there - Kristina recalls teaching beginning harp lessons to third graders when she herself was only in the fifth grade.  It was then that she began taking private lessons with Barbara Chapman, the principal harpist with the Virginia Symphony.  Barbara was a former student of Ms. Bride, our teacher at Eastman, and it was she who encouraged Kristina to come and study here with her.  Kristina describes the school as "magical.”  

Kristina loves to play chamber music, an interest she says goes back to her years in middle school and high school, when she played duets with her sister, who played the flute.  She currently plays in a harp/saxophone ensemble with her boyfriend, which they call the Mana Duo.  Because harp and sax ensembles are rare, they have built up a repertoire of transcriptions (like Ibert’s Entr'acte and Saint-Saens’ Fantaisie, originally for harp and violin) as well as commissioned works.  Kristina describes him as a brilliant musician and says they work very well together.  "It’s so separate from our personal relationship…. we communicate on a different level when we play together.“  One of their upcoming projects include a recital together at SUNY Fredonia.  This summer they will move together to Florida where, she says, they will continue to play together and build an audience for their group.  

Kristina gave her lecture recital on "Musical Exoticism in the Music of Marcel Tournier.”  In her lecture, she talked about a specific piece by Tournier called “Au Hasard des ondes,” which is rarely performed and, as far as we know, has never been recorded.  She calls the piece a musical tour around the world - it is a long, difficult work of nine movements, each of which depicts a different country (Japan, China, Africa, France, Scandinavia, Romania, and Italy).  In her recital, Kristina talked about the ways that Tournier does this, and told me in our discussion earlier how knowing so much about the piece really helped her in playing it.  I learned so much that I didn’t know about Marcel Tournier - like, for instance, that he taught students from all over the world at the Paris Conservatory.  These students would bring him folk songs and musical traditions from their homeland, which he would then use as inspiration for his music.  It was a fascinating lecture and Kristina’s playing was exquisite!!!

One of Kristina’s long-term goals is to become a harp professor at a university - a job which she feels she is not quite ready for yet.  "My plan is to teach privately for ten years, gig, freelance, hopefully build a pretty significant career wherever I am.  And then in ten, twenty, thirty years, apply for jobs at pretty significant places, and have the kind of experience to be able to give my students everything.“  

I asked Kristina what inspired her to be a teacher.  

"It’s about imparting knowledge.  Giving to others the experiences and the life lessons that you’ve learned - I feel like I have a lot to give, and teaching is such a wonderful outlet for that.  The saying "Those who can’t do, teach” is so wrong and backwards.  I feel like if you’re a musician and you don’t want to teach, you are not in the right field.  So much of what we do is about passing on to the next generation, and that’s something that really excites me.“  

I totally agree.  Thanks for talking to me, Kristina!