- Tonight's program will be announced from the stage.

- You are about to take a journey through the imagination of Deborah Henson-Conant. The scenery changes every night. The program is announced from the stage.

TITLE: Deborah Henson-Conant — Composer / Performer / Electric Harpist

"SUB-TITLE" or "BRIEF DESCRIPTION": She builds new worlds from sound and stories [and is revolutionizing the way the world sees this ancient instrument with her cross-genre jazz-pop-comedy-folk-Flamenco-Celtic music.]

BASIC BIO:
Composer, performer, singer, songwriter, author, cartoonist, entertainer, comedian, electric harpist – mix those together and you can just begin to describe Deborah Henson-Conant. Whether she's tearing up the Edinburgh Fringe festival with her one-woman show, touring the country with the Boston Pops, opening for Ray Charles at Tanglewood, or mesmerizing a theater-full of children at the Kennedy Center, Henson-Conant, live, on stage, is a powerful experience.

Henson-Conant rocked onto the jazz charts in the late 80’s with her albums on the GRP label. Since then she’s established her own record label and released a dozen other albums from Latin Jazz to Celtic, Blues, Folk-Pop and Spoken Word. She’s jammed, on-stage and off, with the likes of Steven Tyler, Bobby McFerrin, Rufus Reid, Keith Lockhart, Doc Severinsen and Marvin Hamlisch. She's a Grammy-Nominated artist and star of "Invention & Alchemy," her one-woman show with full orchestra, which debuted on PBS stations in March 2007. She’s premiered her compositions with countless symphonies, lectured at the Paris Conservatory, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and “Meet the Composer.” She’s been featured on NBC, CBS, and CNN, and starred in the PBS Special “Celtic Harpestry.”

Henson-Conant has revolutionized her instrument. She’s brought vibrant passion and individuality to its sound - and in the process she herself has been transformed. Her work is an exploration of possibilities – a transformation that moves her audience out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.

For more information, visit her website: www.HipHarp.com.

DEBORAH’S INSTRUMENTS:
Deborah's blue harps were custom-built for her by the Camac Harp Company in France. For more info about these harps, visit: www.camac-harps.com

Electric Strap-On Harps:

Deborah’s “Baby Blue” body-harp is an solid body electric Celtic harp. It has 30 strings, each with a crystal piezo pickup, and weighs approximately 18 pounds (8.2 kg).

The Lyon & Healy "Red" Silhouette is an electric lever harp. It has 33 strings (each with a piezo pick-up) and weighs approximately 17 pounds (7.7 kg).

Free-Standing Concert Harps:

Deborah's "Big Blue" Electric Concert Harp is an electric-acoustic instrument. It has 47 strings (each with a piezo pickup), 7 pedals and it weighs about 70 pounds (32 kg).

The Lyon & Healy Style 23 Natural is an ornate pedal harp. It has 47 strings and weighs about 81 pounds (37 kg).

Wurlitzer Starke Model Gold

Lyon & Healy Style 2000 Electroacoustic

Other:

The Small Rubarth "R-Harp" is a lap harp.

PRESENTERS PLEASE NOTE: Please double check with Deborah about the instruments she'll be playing before printing programs - the above instrument information may not be correct for all shows.

PROGRAM BIO #2 (Updated 9/26/05)
(339 word bio - 77 word instrument description - - 16 to 32 word Titles/Subtitles - Total 450 words)
Title and Subtitle are optional. Text in brackets can be omitted if space is an issue.

TITLE: Deborah Henson-Conant — Composer / Performer / Electric Harpist

"SUB-TITLE" or "BRIEF DESCRIPTION": She builds new worlds from sound and stories [and is revolutionizing the way the world sees this ancient instrument with her cross-genre jazz-pop-comedy-folk-Flamenco-Celtic music.]

BASIC BIO:
Harpist, singer, songwriter, composer, author, cartoonist, entertainer, comedian – mix those together and you can just begin to describe Deborah Henson-Conant. Using her voice, her custom-built harp, her creativity and her love of symphonic music, Deborah Henson-Conant sculpts sound like others sculpt clay. Her performances blur the line between concert and Musical Theater. “Music, for me, is a way to tell a story," she explains. "And no story, in my mind, is complete without its music.”

Whether she’s filming a DVD with the Grand Rapids Symphony, tearing up the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, touring with the Boston Pops, opening for Ray Charles at Tanglewood, or mesmerizing a theater-full of children at the Kennedy Center, Henson-Conant, live on stage, is indescribable. In her solo shows, she creates a world of sound, story and imagery out of solo harp and voice. In her orchestra shows she brings her background of improvisation and theater together with a love of lush, colorful orchestrations; orchestrations that feature symphony soloists from piccolo to timpani and music-scapes that paint an achingly romantic moonlit waltz one moment – and the laboratory of a mad scientist the next.

Henson-Conant rocked onto the jazz charts in the late 80’s. Since then she’s established her own record label and released a dozen other albums from Latin Jazz to Celtic, Blues, Folk-Pop and Spoken Word. She’s jammed, on-stage and off, with the likes of Steven Tyler, Bobby McFerrin, Rufus Reid, Keith Lockhart, Doc Severinsen and Marvin Hamlisch. She’s premiered her compositions with countless symphonies, lectured at the Paris Conservatory, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and “Meet the Composer.” She’s been featured on NBC, CBS, and CNN, and starred in the PBS Special “Celtic Harpestry.” Henson-Conant has revolutionized her instrument. She’s brought vibrant passion and individuality to its sound - and in the process she herself has been transformed. Her work is an exploration of possibilities – a transformation that moves her audience out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.

For more information, visit her website: www.HipHarp.com.

DEBORAH’S INSTRUMENTS:
Both Deborah's harps were custom-built for her by the Camac Harp Company in France. For more info about these harps, visit: www.camac-harps.com

Deborah’s “Baby Blue” body-harp is an solid body electric Celtic harp. It has 30 strings, each with a crystal Piezo pickup and weighs approximately 18 pounds (8.2 kg).

Deborah's "Big Blue" Electric Concert Harp is an electric-acoustic instrument. It has 47 strings (each with a Piezo pickup), 7 pedals and it weighs about 70 pounds (32 kg).

PRESENTERS PLEASE NOTE: Please double check with Deborah about the instruments she'll be playing before printing programs - the above instrument information may not be correct for all shows.

Deborah Henson-Conant is called the “wild woman of the harp,” and she’s changing the way the world sees this ancient instrument. To describe Deborah is nearly impossible. She calls her music “cross-genre”: jazz-pop-comedy-folk-blues-flamenco-Celtic, and she is as much an entertainer as a musician. She performs in symphony halls with major orchestras and plays intimate shows in jazz clubs and theaters internationally. She sings, plays the electric harp, “tells tall tales with the ease of a stand-up comic,” (Plain Dealer, Cleveland) and has become synonymous with her website address: HipHarp.com.

Having toured with the electric concert harp for over ten years, in ‘96 Deborah dreamed of a harp she could strap on and wear. She convinced French harp builder Joel Garnier to design her an electric harp that was a cross between an electric guitar and a celtic harp. With a crystal pickup on each string, this harp is powerful enough to soar over the brass section of an orchestra, but intimate enough to perform the most delicate of ballads. Most importantly for Deborah, it allowed her to get out from behind the 6-foot concert grand harp, and combine her lifelong love of music, theatre and movement.

Having long been considered the “renegade harpist” of the music world, a pioneer in every respect, Deborah was surprised to discover that once she strapped on her harp, she became part of one of the oldest musical traditions: The singing, storytelling bard . . . but with a wild twist!

Deborah Henson-Conant has toured with the Boston Pops, opened for Ray Charles at Tanglewood, performed her one-woman show from Budapest to Boston, starred in the PBS special “Celtic Harpestry,” and has been featured on NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, and hosted television shows for BET and BBC Affiliates. She has also been interviewed by Charlies Rose, Lou Rawls, Joan Rivers, Studs Terkel, Scott Simon, Billy Taylor and Susan Stamberg.

DEBORAH’S INSTRUMENTS:
Deborah’s “Baby Blue” body-harp is an solid body electric Celtic harp custom-built for her by CAMAC harps in France. It has 30 strings, each with a crystal Piezo pickup and weighs approximately 16 pounds (7.3 kg). For more info visit: www.camac-harps.com.

Deborah’s Electric Concert Harp is an electric-acoustic instrument built by Lyon & Healy Harps. It has 46 strings (each with a Piezo pickup), 7 pedals and it weighs about 75 pounds. For more info visit: www.lyonhealyharps.com.

PRESENTERS PLEASE NOTE: Please double check with Deborah about the instruments she'll be playing before printing programs.

Spring '05 Newsletter 2- Paragraph Blurb (use all or part of either or both paragraphs):
Deborah Henson-Conant tells stories with music, sings and plays the solid-body electric harp. She’s a cross-genre, Blues-Flamenco-Celtic-Funk-Folk-Jazz dynamo. She tells tall tales with the ease of a stand-up comic. She solos and wails like a rock guitarist. She’s America’s only bad-girl harpist. See her once, and you’ll never look at a harp the same way again.

Deborah has opened for Ray Charles at Tanglewood, toured with the Boston Pops, jammed onstage with Bobby McFerrin and offstage with Steven Tyler, premiered her works with ensembles from the National Symphony Orchestra to the Prague Radio Orchestra. She’s been interviewed by Scott Simon, Charlie Rose, Studs Terkel, starred in the PBS Special “Celtic Harpestry” and been featured in stories on NBC, CBS, CNN and NPR.

Standard Blurb:
Music … Theatre … Comedy … Passion . Deborah Henson-Conant tells stories with music and plays the harp … the electric harp … the strap-on, solid-body electric harp. Vibrant stories where watermelons can swing their hips like Elvis, dogs go back to school to get their pedigrees and Jimi Hendrix turns up the distortion on his solid-body electric harp in Heaven. Funny, moving, and thoroughly unexpected musical theatre.

Other options:
Step into the mind of Deborah Henson-Conant. A mind where watermelons can swing their hips like Elvis, dogs go back to school to get their pedigrees and Jimi Hendrix turns up the distortion on his solid-body electric harp in Heaven.

- HipHarp in Concert
- Wild Woman of the Harp
- Stand up and Sing, Harp Lady!
- HipHarp Fantasies