My “Harp Writing for Composers” Workshop

Writing for the Harp

Who better than composers to write more music for harp?

🎼 Harpists often say that we have not enough repertoire. I too, am constantly on the hunt for the next new non-harpy harp music so there is absolutely a need for more composers to write music for us ✍🏻 That’s why one of my passions is working with composers and conducting workshops to teach them more about this mysterious instrument.

I’ve conducted this workshop for composers a couple of times now. My intention is always to help them better understand the harp as an instrument, some basics of writing for us and gain some ideas from our extensive techniques.

Often I’m told that the composers have learnt things that they’ve never read about. I guess orchestration books are typically not so extensive and simply hearing from the instrumentalist’s perspectives is always better as we experienced all these things first hand!

My workshop also includes an extensive handout for the composers which you can access here. It is a collection of my findings and research and I hope to continually update it. It’s by no means extensive but I hope that with this, we can encourage more composers to write for this instrument!

I’ve done this several times now; in Singapore for Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts students, in Boston Conservatory’s Composer’s Seminar, Berklee College of Music’s Instrumentation class and New England Conservatory’s Orchestration class. From this, I’ve worked with many composers in their harp parts or solos and have had the privilege to premiere some of these works! Sharing some of them here:

I honestly just want new funky pieces for harp and if these workshops could do just that, it would be absolutely amazing 🌟