Street-Harp Launch & Hendrix with the URO

In the next 7 days I’m doing two very cool things in the Boston Area and  I hope you can be there! Here’s what’s happening:

Ultra-Sonic Rock orchestra cameo appearance this weekend (including a FREE open rehearsal tonight!) and the launch of my summer Street-Harp Project next June 9th, with a FREE concert at South Station in Boston.

With the URO (Ultra-Sonic Rock Orchestra) I’m doing my Jimi Hendrix version of “Star Spangled Banner” (I’ll try to get  video) …

And the FREE CONCERT June 9th at South Station is the kick-off for my summer project, “Street-Harp.” From 11:30 – 1:30 Thu. June 9th, I’ll be smack-dab in the middle of one of the world’s Ten Coolest Train Stations!. This is the hub of the hub: subways, Amtrack, busses all converge here, so you CAN get there from here — from practically anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard — by public transportation!

This great new stuff all happened like this: the weather was just starting to get better, so I decided to promote my last concert by dragging  my  harp into the streets, playing with one hand and handing out flyers with the other …. (well, sort of). As so often happens to me, what started out as a fun, quirky promotional idea turned into something much deeper.

Part of why that happened, I think, is that I gave myself some guidelines before I went out: I wasn’t going to worry about getting big crowds, or holding their attention if it got it.  I wanted to focus on one-to-one connections with people, give myself permission to ‘lose’ potential listeners by really engaging with others, and let myself simply stop playing and just talk to people, or even let them try playing the harp themselves.  I didn’t want to feel like I was obligated to play or that I was trying to ‘get’ people to listen.  I just wanted to be out there.

What I didn’t expect was how much street-playing affected my chops — an hour playing on the streets made me feel stronger as a player than the same hour at home practicing.  Surprise.  The second surprise was that I found myself creating new tunes right on the street, almost as if I were inventing a sound-track for the experience I was having at the moment.

So I started getting excited about doing a lot more street-playing, maybe even going to specific locations and seeing what they inspired for me, then recording and releasing those tunes in an album called “Street.”  And the minute I’d decided to do that, the folks from South Station (one of the worlds “Ten Coolest Train Stations” no less) called to ask if I want to do a free concert June 9th right in the station itself.  That, I couldn’t pass up, and so I decided I’d make that concert the launch of a my summer Street-Harp project.  And – boom — that means the project starts next Thursday!

So I hope I see you for my Hendrix cameo with the URO this weekend or next week at South Station.  If you can’t get to the Boston area, check out my TOUR PAGE for other shows and workshops coming up.

p.s. About these images — they’re actually the front and back of a BOOKMARK! Bea (my lovely assistant) and I went down to check out the South Station and we were blown away!  Along with the usual pizza and sandwich shop was a gem of a bookstore, sitting right in the middle of the station. I was drawn into it immediately, where I discovered a fellow-composer was one of the booksellers. So on the spot we decided to make a bookmark, which, as of this afternoon, “Barbara’s Booksellers” will pass out with each book sold. You can see both the front and the back of the bookmark here on this page (don’t tell me if you find any typos – they’ve already gone to the printer).

And, to all my Facebook Fans who helped me edit the bookmark – THANK YOU! Those comments completely changed the design in wonderful ways!