Perth Harp Festival

What a delight it was to be at the Perth Harp Festival at the beginning of this month! A brilliantly organised event by the West Australia Harp Society, and it was a privilege to be able to present a workshop on extended techniques for lever harp as well as a concert of my music.

​It was the first time I had travelled on a plane with my lever harp and my harp certainly had some adventures on the way.

The first of which was the realisation at the reclaim baggage area at Perth airport that, after 18 hours of travel, my harp hadn't made the transfer during the stopover in Hong Kong. Maximum stress levels then ensued!!! But the good people at Perth airport sorted it out and eventually the harp made the next flight and was couriered on to me.

Now that I know that the harp might be "bumped' off flights without my knowledge because it's 'oversized', I'm prepared for future trips. Despite having a photo of a harp stuck onto the harp case, airport check in staff still came up to me asking if it was a bicycle.

Lesson learnt = always make sure there is another flight to your destination after the one you have booked, to give the harp a  chance to catch up with you in case it's bumped off the flight.

The relief of the harp arriving the day before my recital was immense!!!

After the harp arrival drama, it was straight into the harp festival hosted at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts. Unfortunately I could only be there for one day, which was a great shame as I would have like to have been there for the whole event. As well as meeting lots of lovely harpists in Perth, it was fabulous to see so many different makes of harps that I hadn't seen before. I'm very grateful to the kindness extended to me by the local harpists, especially Bronwen Wallis who organised some private teaching for me, and to WAAPA for allowing me to teach in their college. Harp festivals are great places to meet with old and new harp friends, and it was good to spend a little bit of time hanging out with new harp friends including Becky Swann from New Zealand.

Homeward bound was more straightforward with my harp and it managed not to get lost this time in the airport system!

We had a few days in Hong Kong on the way back to the U.K and it was a chance to visit Ting Lau in her harp studio after meeting her the week before in Perth. 

I'm really looking forward to coming back to Australia, (and hopefully Hong Kong) in August 2020 for a more extensive trip and will be working with the harp students at WAAPA and collaborating on a new contemporary harp duo project with Australian harpist, Catherine Ashley.