Festival of Harps - Multicultural Music Event
The Multi-Cultural Music Fellowship (MCMF) celebrates the20th Anniversary of the FESTIVAL OF HARPS
Starts September 30th and runs through the month of October
with an unprecedented event featuring
35 acts and over 75 performers,
gathered for one evening in a unique setting.
The 20th Anniversary celebration includes 3 weeks of Fringe Concerts & Workshops.
The magnificent Chapel of the Chimes columbarium, designed by Julia Morgan in 1928, contains over 100 rooms decorated in a style evocative of gothic cathedrals. This one-of-a-kind "walk through" concert will allow listeners to experience the widest range of harps and harp styles ever gathered for one public event. By wandering from room to room, they will be able to hear some of the world's best harpists playing music from Africa, Asian, Scandinavia, Latin America, the Mediterranean and the British Isles, along with classical, jazz, medieval and renaissance styles. Storytelling, song, dance, and original compositions will be featured by many of the artists and special programs for children are included.
Begun in San Francisco in 1989, the FESTIVAL OF HARPS (FOH) has grown from a grass roots concert of multi-cultural harp music to a much-anticipated event. Showcasing harp music at its finest, the Multi-Cultural Music Fellowship (MCMF), directed by Bay Area harpist Diana Stork, has brought artists from all over the world to share one stage, fostering collaborations and world premieres between some of the best in world, classical and contemporary music styles. Besides annual concerts in major venues throughout the greater SF Bay Area (Yerba Buena Gardens, Grace Cathedral, Mountain View Performing Arts Center, Sunset Center) FOH has toured the West from New Mexico to Alaska. MCMF's many activities include: educational outreach programs on the history of the harp, support of numerous harp ensembles for underprivileged Latino children (Mission, Bahia Vista, Bell Aire harp ensembles), and sponsorship of the Bay Area Youth Harp Ensemble.
Director Diana Stork expresses her vision with great simplicity: "I want to bring the world together through the harp. In a community like ours, with its extraordinary cultural diversity, the task of finding those common threads that bind all people together, no matter what their origins, is my inspiration. And this particular thread, so vibrant, lovely and joyful, is a delight to discover and re-discover, at every new Festival of Harps.‰
Sponsored by the Multi-Cultural Music Fellowship, a 501 C3 non-profit organization, dedicated to bringing the world together through music.
ARTIST BIOS:
RUDIGER OPPERMANN - New Horizons for Celtic Harp
Germany's foremost Celtic harp player began playing the harp in 1973 and has virtuosically surpassed all existing standards on this instrument. Rüdiger has been an untiring inspiration to the Celtic harp scene, playing hundreds of concerts on harps of all sizes and shapes with his unique, improvisational free-style. With early musical training on the piano and cello, Rüdiger taught himself to play the harp, furthering his musical studies through extensive travels in Africa, Ceylon, India, Indonesia, Afghanistan and Turkey. In all of these places he learned local instruments and acquired an understanding of diverse and contrasting “worlds of music”.
PARK STICKNEY - Jazz Harp
While attempting to live simultaneously in Brooklyn and on a farm in Switzerland, jazz harpist Park Stickney is constantly in motion, giving concerts throughout Europe and the U.S. An active teacher, he is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London, an assistant at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Lyon, and teaches a yearly jazz harp class at the Lausanne Conservatoire, Switzerland. He has given workshops at Juilliard, the conservatories of Paris, Lucerne, Warsaw, Torino, Barcelona, Madrid, Zaragoza, Cardiff, Munich, Trinity College (London), and the Berklee College of Music, among others, as well as at countless harp festivals worldwide. www.myspace.com/parkstickneylove
ANN & CHARLIE HEYMANN - Gaelic & Welsh Harps, Gold & Horsehair Strings
Ann Heymann is considered the greatest player of the ancient wire-strung Gaelic harp and is noted for returning the Gaelic harp to a living tradition. Ann performs throughout North America, Europe and Australia and her acclaimed recordings and tutor books are essential for those with an interest in this ancient harp of Ireland and Scotland. She currently plays a replica of the famous 14th century Trinity College with a one-piece soundbox carved from a willow log and strings made from18 carat gold.
CARLOS REYES - Paraguayan Harp
Although he had been well known in his native country as a child prodigy ("the little Mozart of Paraguay"), California audiences first came to know Carlos Reyes through his performances on electric harp and violin with the group Merlin. His feet planted firmly in both North and South American music, his album, The Beauty of it All, combined jazz, rock, and funk with the traditional music of his homeland. Carlos has amassed a large and enthusiastic Bay Area following while maintaining a growing international concert schedule. His charismatic personality and outstanding musical talents are a potent contribution with which he performs an extensive and entertaining repertoire.
CHERYL ANN FULTON - Triple Harp Ensemble
Cheryl Ann Fulton is one of the world‚s premier performers of historical harps, and one of the few harpists to play triple harp, medieval harp, and lever harps. Cheryl has performed on over thirty albums and soundtracks broadly ranging from medieval, baroque, orchestral, and contemporary music to Celtic music and film scores, on records labels such as PolyGram, Koch International Classics, Nonesuch, Gourd Music and others. Her first solo album, The Airs of Wales, brought her recognition. She is a composer as well as a performer, and her original compositions from her second solo album, The Once & Future Harp, have been featured on National Public Radio. Fulton is a Fulbright scholar. In 1987, she received a Fulbright Award for research and performance in Lisbon, Portugal, where she served as principal harpist for Portugal's orchestra, the Orchestre Gulbenkian. She is a contributing scholar for the new edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and has written a chapter for A Performers Guide to Medieval Music.
CHRIS CASWELL - Celtic Harp
Chris is a true Celtic bard. Beginning in 1976, Chris recorded three albums and toured North America and Europe with Robin Williamson and His Merry Band. In 1980 he formed Caswell Carnahan with Danny Carnahan and recorded two albums. Holy Wood is Chris's solo bronze-strung harp album and displays this rare and hauntingly beautiful instrument in a mix of the popular and eclectic from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England and France. Chris was a featured artist with Bonnie Rideout‚s national A Scottish Christmas tour and Live from the National Geographic. A natural teacher, he has held harp retreats throughout the country and has taught at numerous music camps. His Caswell Harps was re-established in 2004 in Berkeley, California. As a harp maker, Chris is known for blending tradition and innovation. His harps are considered among the finest traditional harps available.
Youssoupha Sidibe - West African Kora
Youssoupha's artistic career began over 20 years ago in his home of Senegal, West Africa, where he was trained as a kora player at the National Music Conservatory of Senegal. Since his arrival on the international music circuit, he has recorded, performed and/or collaborated with a diverse list of artists including India Arie, Bela Fleck, Charles Neville, and Michael Franti. He plays the traditional West African sounds of the kora (a 21-string harp-lute) with the mystic Sufi devotional chanting of the Senegalese Baay Faal community. Wide-ranging and empowering, Youssoupha's music has most recently appeared on the CD „For All‰, a collaboration with the reggae vocalist Vaughn Benjamin. www.myspace.com/youssouphasidibe
The 20th Annual FOH poster:
http://www.multiculturalmusicfellowship.org/FoHposter20large.html
Labels: EVENTS, MUSIC REVIEW
