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Remembering the Big Sky Harp Festival
by Harper Tasche
(reprinted with permission from Yahoo Groups' Harplist)
I've also just about found my feet after last weekend's Rocky Mountain
harp high, and want to add my voice to all those thanking Bonnie Pulliam
so much for staging such an amazing festival -- I haven't *ever* seen such
an incredible lineup of top-notch performers and presenters! I thought
people might enjoy hearing more of the details, so here goes.
We checked in at Big Sky two nights early, partly to take advantage of the
great festival room rates so close to Yellowstone, and partly to give
ourselves a chance to regroup after eight performances the weekend before
at a Renaissance Faire. We were greeted on Tuesday night by an
unbelievably beautiful (and long!) thunder and lightning storm the night
before the festival officially began: being at 7500 feet in a bowl
surrounded by mountains, the thunder was literally nonstop for nearly two
hours. We were watching from our hotel room, with a perfect view of Lone
Peak, and it was amazing... first a flash of lightning behind the
mountain, so the sky was brilliant white and the silhouette of the
mountain was stark black, then a minute later the lightning was behind us,
so the sky was black and the snow on the mountain was so bright
bluish-white it left an after-image in our eyes. We couldn't help but
think that all the mountain gods and goddesses were coming to hear all the
music too.
The Wednesday night concert opened with the "WolfTones" doing a set of
'60s rock-n-roll... this group, a Big Sky exclusive, was made up of three
harps, a lead singer, and a drummer: John Metras on lead cross-strung
harp, melodica, and backup vocals; Nicolas Carter on Paraguayan harp
(loved those bass lines!), myself on rhythm cross-strung harp and backup
vocals; Neil McNeill on lead vocals; and a great drummer named Mark
Sickich who came down from his steady gig with a rock band in Missoula to
join us for the evening. It was great fun -- we had our typical two
rehearsals before the show, Bonnie got us tie-dye T shirts with our band
logo on them, along with some love beads and peace sign medallions to
wear, and everybody had a good time. The second performer was Louise
Trotter and she carried her set with aplomb, delighting everybody with her
usual mix of American traditional tunes and delightful stage patter... she
even had us all whistling along on the theme from "Andy Griffith." After
a quick stretch break, Laura Zaerr took the stage with Noah Brenner (a
harp student of hers at the University of Oregon) and wowed everybody with
Laura's piece "River Right Rhumba" as a duet; Noah played a beautiful solo
tango piece, then Laura came back with an excellent string quartet from
Bozeman and did a stunning performance of Laura's "Appalachian Concerto"
for lever harp and strings. Finally, Park Stickney plugged in an
electro-acoustic L&H pedal harp for his set and brought the house down
with a great set of jazz pieces (my personal favorite being his treatment
of a Purcell passacaglia) ending, of course, with "Pink Panther."
Thursday afternoon we had a mini-concert by Bronzewood Paedeia, that being
our own Kevin Holsinger playing harp and Michele Sharik playing
handbells; I've heard them a few times now, and there's something in each
of their performances that is simply breathtakingly gorgeous... this time,
for me, it was their arrangement of "Nightengale" by Deborah Henson-Conant,
and it was wonderful.
Thursday night's concert opened with a harp and "guittern" (a cittern
shaped like a guitar) duet played by harpist Sarah Deere-Jones and husband
Phil Williams from Cornwall. In addition to their beautiful playing of
traditional Cornish tunes, their impromptu patter was magnificent: Phil's
strings kept breaking, and the longer Sarah ad-libbed the funnier she
became -- I'll never forget her suddenly commenting on how unnerving it
was to have a (stuffed) mountain goat staring down at them from above the
lodge fireplace in the back of the concert space. I was up next,
borrowing an FH36 from Dusty Strings this time, and after three solo
pieces from my new "Folk Harp Going Places" book I was joined onstage by
wonderful cellist Jesse Ahmann from Bozeman, with whom I finished my set
by playing "An island apart" and "Featherspirit" from my "TheaSophia
Suite" for harp and cello. After the stretch break, Sharlene Wallace gave
us a set of original, Latin, and Celtic tunes (complete with
back-and-forth banter between Sharlene and Alfredo Ortiz in the
audience)... one of the standout moments was hearing her drop seamlessly
into the big "Nutcracker Suite" cadenza in the middle of a tune, and just
as seamlessly finish the original as if nothing had happened. She asked
Kim Robertson to join her for a set of jigs and reels that finished her
set. Nicolas Carter then took the stage and brought us a wonderful set of
original and Latin music, including a piece he played utterly beautifully
on a harp with a foamboard sound box (who knew?) -- but Nicolas could
probably make any harp sound good. The four of us (Sarah, Sharlene,
Nicolas, and myself) finished the concert with a "sing-along" Pachelbel's
Canon, which was alternately gorgeous and silly when a group near the
front sang a verse of "Puff the Magic Dragon" along with the Pachelbel
(since it has the same chord progression).
Friday's mini-concert was from our own Beth Kolle, who treated us with a
lovely set of Norwegian and Swedish tunes, with a haunting Finnish waltz
thrown in for good measure. Between pieces we got to hear some of her
memories of her two HARPA tours to Norway and Sweden -- if she does
another one of those, I think everybody should go! She ended her set with
"Troll Mother's Lullaby," and you haven't lived until you've heard a room
full of harp players singing "Ay, ay, ay, ay, BOOF" at the top of their
lungs.
Friday night opened with John Metras, who worked his magic with the
chromatic cross-strung harp and gave us a beautiful set including
standards from the early 20th century, Parisian street tunes, a bossa nova
by Jobim, and John's signature medley of themes from James Bond films.
How he can manage playing left hand on the harp, while playing such supple
and expressive melodica lines with his right hand at the same time, is
completely beyond me. Joy Yu Hoffman followed him, wearing a beautiful
antique Chinese dress -- I think she said it was 130 years old -- and
playing completely unexpected music (like Brubeck's "Take 5") on the kong
hou (traditional Chinese harp, which is a double-strung single-action harp
lacquered bright red with a peacock carved on the top): the standout piece
for me was hearing her utterly mesmerizing rendition of "Lagan Love" with
all of the pitch-bending and vibrato that the kong hou does so well in
expert hands. After the stretch break Sunita Staneslow brought us a set
of haunting Jewish pieces complete with freely arpeggiated interludes (the
best possible demonstration of her "Art of the Arpeggio" workshop!) which,
combined with her charming down-to-earth patter, was wonderful to behold
as always. (For any of you who don't know the end of the story, she *did*
finally buy the designer jacket she had borrowed just before the concert
from the hotel boutique.) Kim Robertson joined her for a rousing duet of
"Glenlivet," then launched directly into her own set; in addition to
favorites like "Maya's Return" (making alien sound effects with a tuning
wrench on the strings), Kim played some delightful new arrangements from
her forthcoming CD of American folk tunes -- though whether her mother
will like these remains to be seen; as Kim noted, "Maybe she won't notice"
all the African percussion? Kim brought Park back to the stage for a
beautiful duet encore of "Jupiter" from Holst's "The Planets."
Let's not forget that dozens of workshops were going on all day Thursday
through Saturday -- including many more presenters than just those who
appeared on stage. It was an embarrasment of riches; I'd look over the
schedule and get all excited about attending a session, only to realize
that I was teaching one at the same time. I was able to attend Seumas
Gagne's "Scottish Gaelic for Singing Harpers" class, which was dazzling
not only in how much material we covered, but that in less than 90 minutes
we were able to "sound out" reasonable pronunciation for actual song
lyrics and have fun doing it! We had fun in my three workshops too
("Beautiful Tunes for Beginners," "Getting the Most From Your Small Harp,"
and "Becoming a Harp Teacher"), though I think we all laughed the most in
"Tunes for Beginners" -- it's such a treat to work with a group of mostly
adult-onset harpers, using all the means we can find to learn simple
melodies using visual, auditory, kinesthetic, spatial, and music-analysis
cues. The whole group did great! The other session I attended, which
sounded dubious in the schedule but was quite wonderful, was "Deborah
Henson-Conant Tells You Everything She Knows" -- it was an outstanding
question-and-answer session which covered an incredibly wide range of
subjects, from her hairdo to furthering one's career to being true to
one's own vision, to balancing work demands and personal needs, to
development as an artist, and many other topics that I'm not remembering
at the moment. For all her high-energy stage presentation, wild hair, and
larger-than-life legend, at nearly every meal I heard someone talking
about how personable and accessible she had been to their questions and
comments. It was a rare treat to get to know the offstage DHC, and if you
ever have the opportunity to attend any of her workshops or summer
sessions it would be well worth it.
Saturday night's concert was all Deborah Henson-Conant, who wowed the
crowd with her strap-on electric lever harp and wireless stage-roaming...
from rowdy blues, to tender and funny songs for her mother, to the
no-holds-barred "Baroque Flamenco" (solo version, on the electro-acoustic
pedal harp) she held us in the palm of her hand and we loved it. For an
encore she did a spectacular version of "Danny Boy" with not only
heartfelt and beautiful singing but very tastefully accompanied with
perfectly-placed altered chords. After that she gathered all the
performers, volunteers, and exhibitors on the stage for "group photo op"
-- it's amazing any of us could walk after all those flashbulbs! --
followed by an around-the-room July 4th parade.
After that, of course, was the Saturday night céilidh with Seumas Gagne as
the "Fear an Teighe" (man of the house, aka MC). Seumas has shepherded
Scottish-style ceilidhs ever since I've known him, and he does a marvelous
job of taking a nearly-random assortment of performers and performances
and weaving them together into a satisfying evening. This one opened,
according to tradition, with Seumas who accompanied his partner Doug in a
beautiful Gaelic song. Other highlights included a group performance
(with harps, strings, winds, handbells, and voices) of "Prelude for Peace"
written by Sharon Thormahlen and Anna Jenkins; Phil Williams singing a
hilarious "harp moving no more" song to the tune of "Wild Rover;" Beth
Kolle giving a beautiful performance of the haunting medieval Norwegian
ballad "Heiemo og Nykkjen" (with yours truly accompanying on cross-strung
harp); and Neil McNeill leading a sing-along of "Annie's Song" (same
accompanist). There were two full sets filled with funny and touching
songs and stories; at one point Alfredo Rolando Ortiz took the stage and
brought Bonnie Pulliam up to sit next to him while he did a stunningly
beautiful improvisation just for her, and most of us had tears in our eyes
by the end. The "official" end of the ceilidh was everyone gathering in a
circle to sing "Auld Lang Syne" (two verses!)... then the "after-ceilidh"
took over, and by the end of that we'd had more songs in English and
Gaelic, dance tunes and ballads and laments on the harp, only one drunken
but appreciative fellow who wandered over when the bar cut him off... a
delightful moment when Deborah joined in and led the little group of us in
another American tune (I happily sang along on the chorus, but don't
remember the song at present)... we didn't quite make it all the way to
dawn, but the last half dozen of us did finally wrap it up around 2 in the
morning.
Sunday breakfast (mere hours later!) was the last thing on the schedule,
and though our numbers were few -- many people had taken off early to beat
the holiday weekend traffic -- and our eyelids were heavy, it was great
fun taking our time as the conversations flowed. I think the dining room
staff were glad to see us go, by the time 11:00 rolled around. :-)
So, thanks again to all of the workshop presenters, performers,
exhibitors, volunteers (especially Zachary and Ross Pulliam, and Alice
Williams, who all seemed to be helping somebody every time I saw them),
and a standing ovation to Bonnie Pulliam for providing such an incredible
harp weekend for all of us!
As always --
Harper
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