A Hectic Dutch Harp Festival weekend in Utrecht, Netherlands!

Festival Photos, Selfies with Harpists, Behind-the-scenes, and much more!

It’s a packed weekend – an adventurous experience worth sharing.

Festival Photos …

FUN FACT: The piece we were playing is one of the very newest publications my “Legacy Project Team” has just released.  It’s a musical game for 1-100 harp players and I played it with a whole symphony and audience last October in Salzburg. If you want to play it yourself, you can buy it here: https://dhc.gumroad.com/l/califypso

World Harp Competition …

A LIVE Dancable “Baroque Flamenco meets The Strings of Passion”  Harp Workshop …

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A post shared by Deborah Henson-Conant (@hipharpist)

Selfies with Harpists …

Fun Facts: Celine reminded me that she was in one of my first-ever jazz workshops, decades ago at the Paris Conservatory – and that she still has the (massive!) handout I prepared for that series of workshops and shares the exercises with her students. That hand-out later became the foundation of Hip Harp Academy where harpists around the world now learn the fundamentals of improv, harmony and jazz – and those exercises are the foundation of the “Modulation Staircase” series we’re just now starting to publish.  So great to see you again, Celine!

Fun Fact: Joke and Jolijne met in “Hip Harp Academy” and have now become playing buddies who consistently create creative fun projects in the Academy.

There’s nothing like having musical friends to play with, people you can try out new ideas with, be silly, share the depth that music and story create.  You can see the whole spectrum of that relationship from the silly to the sublime

• “The Freestylers in Amserfoort” is a spontaneous jam purely for fun, when Academy coach Sally Walstrum visited the Netherlands earlier this year (look for the last entry in the blog post)
• See Joke’s powerful poem set to music about her daughter and the loss of a beloved dog:
• See Jolijne’s beautiful retelling of my musical tale of “The Phoenix”:
• “Vincent and Rembrandt” is a wonderfully silly micro-play with harps – the kind of play that only friends can cook up for fun. If you ever played dress-up or make-believe with your friends as a kid, you’ll love this.

Behind-the-scenes …

… and much more!

As a composer, I connect to the people who use my music to express themselves.

As a teacher, I coach them to break through perfectionism to greater self-expression.

And as a performer, I share all of that on a stage in my own self-expression.

I’m working these days to integrate those 3 aspects of what it means to be an artist who is committed to making a connection in every part of my life.

Here is a snapshot of my feed …