Harpist of the Month of July, Caroline Reyes!

Caroline Reyes is a recent graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in harp performance, as well as a master’s in ethnomusicology. Besides being a fantastic performer and harp teacher, Caroline is a scholar and an active gamelan musician. 

Feminist Theory and Music Conference this week (Okay, A. Why didn’t I know about this conference and B. Why am I not going??). I’m sure I’m not the only one who would love to read this paper!

Besides being a harpist and musicologist, Caroline is also a teacher. She holds the position of harp professor at Roberts Wesleyan College and is looking to start her own private studio. When I asked her what inspired her passion for teaching, she said, “Actually it’s funny, throughout my undergrad, I thought I never wanted to teach. But then, when I took Professor Bride’s pedagogy course, everything changed. I had this great relationship with my student and he did really well, and I thought oh my gosh, I’m actually pretty good at this!” Ms. Bride (our harp teacher) obviously thought so too, as she recommended Caroline for the job at Roberts Wesleyan after she had graduated with her bachelor’s degree. 

Earlier this summer, Caroline played in the American Harp Society’s National Competition. Although she had never applied before (and had actually never performed for a competition before), she made it into the final round, which is super impressive! I asked her how she prepared herself for the competition. She said she had everything ready a few months before the tape was due so that she had time to polish everything, which she said really helped. This also enabled her to take her time recording, and to make sure that she had really good tapes. When she got to the competition itself, she said, she didn’t do too much playing beforehand, but kept herself relaxed and spent time with her family. “I tried to take it easy, to save my energy!”

I explained to Caroline about my competition misgivings - I don’t really feel myself to be cut out for it, and every time I try for a concerto competition, I play miserably. She answered, “I used to feel the same way. But it was a really great experience, and what it’s good for is pushing yourself to really perfect pieces. I think that, for me at least, I would get things to the point where I was happy with them, but the idea of learning something so well that you can play through it without any mistakes is another level. I think that pushing yourself to that level is just good for you as a musician." 

Some of Caroline’s future plans include starting a private studio, continuing her teaching position at Roberts Wesleyan, and performing for the Rochester Fringe Festival. 

Image Credit: Allie Hartley

Caroline is collaborating with local artist Allie Hartley for the concert, which has a theme of dreams and nightmares. Some of the pieces on the program will be Tournier’s Clair de Lune and Eternal Dreamer, as well as a piece by an Australian composer, called Chamber of Horrors. The concert will be free, so if you’re in the area, you should check it out! Thanks for talking to me, Caroline!

Harpist of June: Alida Fabris

In my last semester at Eastman, we had a special guest with us - Alida Fabris, a harpist from Europe! Although she is from Italy, she has gone to school and traveled all over the continent. She told me all about her unique (well, unique to us Americans) educational experiences and the orchestral auditions she has coming up. 

Tags Harpist of the month

March Harpist of the Month: Rosanna Moore!

I know this is coming pretty late in the month, but my harpist of the month of March is Rosanna Moore!  Rosie is currently a graduate student at the Eastman School of Music and comes to us from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England.  Her interests include playing the harp (of course), contemporary music, and acting.  

First I asked Rosie the obvious question - why did you get into playing the harp?

Rosie’s short answer - “Oh, it was big and expensive and awkward.”

Rosie’s long answer - “When I was four or five I went to a music school in the UK and we had an assembly in the morning.  There was a boy from higher up in the school, I think he was about fifteen or sixteen, and he brought his harp in and played for us.  And I sat there going, "he has a harp!! It’s so beautiful!!”  And I went home that evening and said, “Mummy, I want to play the harp.”  She turned around and said, “No you don’t, don’t be silly.”  I pestered them and pestered them and pestered them for a few years, and eventually when I was eight or nine they rented a clarsach for me, and found a teacher.  They said don’t worry, she’ll give up in six months, but I didn’t.  So my dad’s decided that I’m going to be world-famous, so I need to keep him in his old age because he’s been my chauffeur to youth orchestra and concerts and all that.“

Let’s not give my dad any ideas.  

I also asked Rosie how she got into acting.

"I always acted when I was little, I loved doing it.  I used to do little skits for my parents - I’m an only child, and I had loads of stuffed toys, and I used to make my parents sit down and watch these little acts that I put together with my toys.  I was a very cool child.  It just kind of went from there.  I did musicals for a little while, and I chose to do theatre as one of my options in school.  I nearly went and did acting instead of music, but I decided I’d miss the harp more than I’d miss acting, and it’s easier for me to combine it this way.”  

I got Rosie to admit that she can sing, too, but - “Not in public anymore.  But yeah, I’ve got a weird, sort of folky jazz voice that comes out once in a while.”  

We also talked about how she has combined her passions for harp and for acting.  Her undergraduate dissertation was about using theater practice to enhance your musical performance.  She makes a good point that it’s not only singers that need to do this, but instrumentalists, too.  She also talked about starting her final undergraduate recital with “Tea Ceremony” by Catherine Kontz, a piece which is all about the art of drinking tea.  "I did a very dramatic version of that, I sort of based my interpretation on Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter, and also the differences between eastern and western tea ceremonies.  A friend of mine happened to have spent some time in Japan, and she had a geisha kit, so she dressed up and did a Japanese tea ceremony whilst I played.“

Rosie is a person of diverse interests, which is why, she says, she wants to be a freelance musician.  "I change my mind constantly, what I want to do, it’s just the type of person I am.  If you’re attached to an orchestra rather than freelancing, it’s like having the equivalent of a nine to five job, and I can’t do that.  I need to do something different every week.  One week I’m doing a theatrical sort of thing with a mime, next week I’m doing solo concerts, the next week I’m playing in a jazz club in London, next week I’m playing a ballet orchestra - that keeps me going.”  

Rosanna has recently organized ten harpists from the Eastman studio to play “Anthill,” also by Catherine Kontz (www.catherinekontz.com) for what will be its US premiere (we think)!  I asked Rosie about her interest in contemporary music, and how she became  involved in Catherine Kontz’s music in particular.  

“The main reason I got into contemporary music in general was, as a wee little freshman in 2007, my teacher said, we’re going to talk about this concert that we’re going to do at the Huntersfield International Contemporary Music Festival.  It’s all pieces for twenty harps, but there’s one piece that’s being written specifically for the festival that’s for ten harps, and all the harpists at the Northern are going to do it.  She produced this massive graphic score, and we were like "What the heck is that?”  And that, of course, was “Anthill.”  

So Rosie played in the premiere of Anthill at Huntersfield.  The harp ensemble from Royal Northern was then invited to play at European Music Day, held in London in 2010, where they played “Anthill” under the dinosaur bones in the Natural History Museum - which I think is just the coolest image ever.  

You can come and hear the Eastman Harp Ensemble play “Anthill” by Catherine Kontz at the opening concert of the Women in Music Festival on March 25th - TOMORROW - at noon in the Eastman main entrance hall.  Ten harps with huge graphic scores - how often do you get to see that?  

(I will also be playing Caroline Lizotte’s “Odyssee” for the Women in Music Festival on Wednesday, March 27th at noon in the Sproull Atrium!)

Thanks so much for talking to me, Rosie!  Happy spring everyone, warm weather is coming soon!

Anthill rehearsal

February Harpist of the Month!

So I decided to add a new feature to my blog this month, and it is called - Harpist of the Month!  Each month I will pick a harpist to interview (or beg a harpist to let me interview them) and they will be featured on the blog.  

My first harpist of the month is Ms. Christina Brier!  Christina is a second year master’s student at the Eastman School of Music and will be graduating in May.  

The first thing I asked Christina was, of course, the question all harpists are asked - why the harp??

Christina said, “I played violin.  I started violin in kindergarten.  I played in youth orchestra when I was in third or fourth grade and I saw harps there.  And I thought, I would much rather play that!  So I started asking my parents for a harp, and they said no.  And then I kept seeing harps.  I would see them in symphonies, on tv, in recordings, etc.  And then this random lady in my dad’s choir found out that I wanted to play harp, and she said oh, we have a lever harp that we don’t use, you can use that.  And then they knew this lady who was a harp teacher.”

The rest, as they say, is history.  

With the help of a generous aunt, Christina got her pedal harp when she was twelve.  After graduating high school, she majored in music at the Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Watertown, Wisconsin.  Because she was their first harpist, the school created the harp performance major for her and made her harp teacher, Jeanne Henderson (who was also my harp teacher’s teacher… I think this makes Christina my harp-aunt or something), an adjunct professor.  Christina would travel an hour to her harp teacher’s house on the weekends for lessons and attended studio class with the violinists.  Christina talked about the advantages and disadvantages to being the only harpist at the school.  

Christina:  Advantages are if they want a harp, they use you for everything, and they think the harp is amazing.  Disadvantages are, the program has only about sixty people, so I didn’t get to play that much.  I had to play percussion a bunch.

Me: ????

Christina:  Oh, another little known fact - In 5th through 9th grade I played percussion in band, and I took lessons.  So I can sort of play percussion.  I don’t claim that as any great skill.

Who knew??

I asked Christina if she had played any cool gigs or concerts that really stuck out in her memory, and she said, “Playing Mahler was awesome.”  

We’re definitely agreed on that.  

Christina recently performed her master’s recital and it was spectacular!  The Program included Benjamin Britten’s Suite for Harp, Gabriel Faure’s Une Chatelaine en sa Tour, a duo for two harps (which I played in!) called “Parvis” by Bernard Andres, Saint-Saens’ Fantaisie for harp and violin, and Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro.  When we talked, I asked her to share why she picked the pieces she played.  

Christina:  The Britten I heard for the first time several years ago, and when I heard it I thought, I really want to play this piece.  So that’s always been on my to do list, so when it came time for my recital, that was the first I asked if I could do.  And then Faure - before I started playing the harp, my dad bought me some harp cds.  One of them had the Faure on it, so I’ve always wanted to play that, too.  I also wanted to play duets, and she (Ms. Bride, our harp teacher) said, “How about Parvis?”

So, I definitely learned a few things about Christina - not only does she play the harp, but she has also played the violin, piano, and percussion.  Thanks for talking to me, Christina!