Australia Day!

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I'm a few days late but Happy Australia Day to you all! (The big day was 26th January). A day for the best this fine country has to offer- the cricket, and a barbie.

And music!

So it seemed fitting to have a YouTube day with Australian harpist Marshall McGuire playing music by Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks. Her Sonata from 1952 is standard fare in these parts but I gather is lesser know in the wider harping world. 

It is a great piece to play, by and large falling nicely under the fingers. Each movement has a distinctive character which keeps you listening to the end.

Special thanks to Stephen for sharing this one with us on YouTube. Click here to purchase a copy of Marshall's CD 'Awakening' (TP071) which features the Sonata and other fantastic Australian music.

YouTube Faves- Queen's Love of my Life

I saw a documentary last week about Queen which was just fantastic. Apart from all the obvious hits I don't actually know too much about their songs and so it was a good chance to learn some more. I came across this gorgeous one- Love of my Life.

It's a great example of lyric song writing and and shows off Freddie Mercury's voice to perfection. And it was originally recorded with harp! You can hear in the YouTube clip of the 1975 track how the harp just adds highlights, but it could easily have done so much more of the accompaniment.

Either way, I'm looking forward to adding it to my (ever growing) music collection. Enjoy!

Taking the covers off- starting back after a break

Well, it's been a two week break from the harp, which a large part of me was tempted to stretch out even further. But the Tests have finished (cricket, dear people- very important) so without the excuse to lie around all day watching the Australians trounce Sri Lanka (nothing personal) and with gigs looming, it was indeed time to start back.

My general rule of thumb, and fingers, is that whatever time off I have, it will take half that time to get back to where I was before the break. I don't know if this is a hard and fast rule that applies to everyone- let me know how you fare.

So by that reckoning I needed a week to spruce up my muscles and toughen up the callouses.

Here's what I've been doing:

Day 1- A really good tune. The weather here has been shifting wildly from 40 degrees C to 15 degrees C so the harps are obviously feeling it. The cooling has been on. The heating has been on. Welcome to Melbourne. Despite this there have been surprisingly few string breakages. Either way, daily tune ups are required just to remind them what they should be doing.

I then played a light 15 minute session of technical work drawn from Yolanda Kondonassis's Warm Ups found at the back of her book 'On playing the harp'.With some Lariviere thrown in for good measure. At this stage just the scale exercises Nos 5-18

Day 2- After tuning I did one fifteen minute session, the same as yesterday. Later in the day I came back and did a 10 minute session based on the Lariviere arpeggio section Nos 19-35 as well as the arpeggio exercises from Salzedo's 'Conditioning Exercises'.

Day 3- And, boy, does it feel BAD. Definitely the hump day. My hands are just NOT working. So two fifteen minute sessions, still upping the challenge level only VERY slowly. Played through the Theme and some of the Variations from Lariviere No.2 in the first session, and then a very slow bash through Bach-Grandjany No.2, Lariviere No 36 and the Prelude from Bach's BWV 1006a.

It was interesting playing that last one slowly- I heard all these phrasing subtleties that it's really easy to brush over when going like the clappers. Does this mean that sometimes it's good to play badly? Mmm...

Day 4- Over the hump. Fingers moving much better, though I started back on trills today. Trills which could safely be used in a court of law as an unchallenged definition of the term 'lumpy'.

Day 5- And we're back in business- one hour straight of warm ups, technical work and repertoire.

Day 6- Increasing endurance and extending practice time, and it all feels good!



So what do you do to get back into playing?

Summertime

A very Happy New Year to you all! I hope your Christmas was a very special time- ours was unexpectedly somber with my father-in-law collapsing completely unexpectedly on the Thursday before Christmas. We thought he wouldn't survive the Friday, but, after much prayer and many tears, he did. It's still a tough road ahead, but better than we thought at the time.

Once we knew he was stable we made a last minute call to go on our long planned camping trip with a group of church friends. We headed north of Melbourne up the coast to Tathra, in central New South Wales, a favourite holiday destination of ours. It was good to be back!

Here's some pics to give you an idea, and to help those Northern Hemisphere readers remember what summer is like! (And maybe encourage some of you down our way!)

In that last one you can see the historic Tathra Wharf in the background.

And, yep, all the beaches are like that!

To keep the harp theme going somehow here's a fantastic arrangement of Gershwin's 'Summertime' by the UK group 4 Girls 4 Harps: