We are VERY excited to announce that the EIHF Late Night Sessions are back for 2022.
We will be hosting sessions at our wonderful new venue of George Watson’s College after our concerts in the bar area.
To download our session tunebook click HERE.
Elinor Evans – Fun with your Clarsach
By special request, the ever-popular Elinor Evans will be giving a course just for children.
Heather Yule – The Stories, Legends and Tunes of the Ancient Harpers
Cheyenne Brown – Fun and Friendly Scottish Music
The Clarsach Society and the Edinburgh International Harp Festival are proud to announce that the 2021 winner of the Iain Macleòid Young Composer Award is Rhiannon Ramsey-Brimberg.
We’re overjoyed that Rhiannon’s composition will be part of our festival this year.
Read on to discover more about her…
Rhiannon Ramsey-Brimberg is a lever harpist from Stonington, Connecticut, U.S.A.. While earning a Performance degree from Berklee College of Music, she studied under harpists such as Maeve Gilchrist and Mairi Chaimbeul. Rhiannon will be attending the University of Limerick in September for an MA in Irish Music Studies. Rhiannon (stage name, Rhiannon Skye) began playing the harp for others soon after she began her lessons nine years ago, and has only recently begun to write for the harp. Her goal with each piece is to tell a story, while still remaining true to the genre’s stylistic origins.
This year’s festival will be hybrid with separate in-person and online zoom courses, in-person/filmed workshops and in-person/filmed concerts.
We’ll be updating this post daily from Monday the 31st January with who you can expect to see performing and tutoring at the festival!
KEY DATES:
OUR LIST SO FAR….
SAVOURNA STEVENSON & STEVE KETTLEY (Scotland) – Performing as a duo on harp and sax.
TRISTAN LE GOVIC (Brittany) – Breton harp
CORRINA HEWAT’S “THE SONG of the OAK and the IVY” – another chance to hear the EIHF (2010) 80th/30th Festival commission), composed by Corrina Hewat and performed live by Corrina, Bill Taylor, Heather Downie, Tristan le Govic, Mary Macmaster and Wendy Stewart.
WENDY STEWART (Scotland) – Solo harp/voice
CALUM & MÀIRI MACLEOD (Scotland) – Brother & sister duo
MAEVE GILCHRIST (Scotland/USA) – with a *NEW* commission celebrating the 40/90 joint anniversary of The Clarsach Society and the EIHF
GABRIELLA DALL’OLIO (Italy/England) – Pedal harp
FRAYA THOMSEN (Scotland) – Winner of the 2021 Princess Margaret of the Isles Prize for Senior Clarsach
TRANSATLANTIC HOT CLUB (Wales/US) – Jazz trio with Ben Creighton Griffiths on Harp, Adrien Chevalier on Violin and Ashley John Long on Bass.
A NEW GENERATION: ROMY WYMER (Netherlands), PHOENIX ZHANG (Scotland), STEPHANIE HUMPHREYS (Scotland)
CORMAC DE BARRA (Ireland) – Irish Harp
SIOBHÀN ARMSTRONG (Ireland) with the Donegal singer DOIMNIC MAC GIOLLA BRÍDE
Our EIHF 2022 tutors are:
We are planning our 2022 festival as a 4-night, 3-day celebration of all things harp, taking place between Friday the 8th April & Monday the 11th April.
We hope to be able to offer you a hybrid festival with a selection of courses, concerts and workshops on offer, online and in-person in our fabulous NEW VENUE…
Yes, you heard right! We are MOVING and we can’t wait to welcome you to the stunning surroundings of GEORGE WATSON’S COLLEGE, on Colinton Road.
We are sure you’ll appreciate Watson’s:
Whilst the school will be unable to be offer accommodation during the festival we’ll be sure to let you know what options there are nearby in the coming months.
If you’d like to get a feel for the new venue, you can visit their website and watch a video showing the campus, HERE
We’ll be letting you know more details about EIHF 2022 over the coming months but rest assured the safety and health of our EIHF visitors, artists, tutors and volunteers are at the forefront of all our plans.
IMPORTANT EIHF 2022 ANNOUNCEMENT
We have two exciting bits of information for you about next years EIHF…
We’ll be sharing more information soon, but be assured we are busy planning a hybrid in-person festival with a virtual element, meaning that we can all enjoy some wonderful harp music and learning, safely.We’re unable to answer specific questions about our 2022 festival just yet, but please put these dates in you diary, wherever you are in the world.
Take care and keep harping away!
The EIHF committee
It’s a little over a week since we wrapped up the 40th Edinburgh International Harp Festival, online for a second time.We’re looking to gather the thoughts of those of you who took part. So whether you watched a concert or took part in a zoom or pre-recorded concert or workshop, we’d really appreciate it if you could spend a bit of time filling in this survey. We genuinely do take your feedback seriously and read every piece of feedback we’re given.
Here’s the link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/EIHF2021Survey
NEWS JUST IN – Our friends at the Clan Donald Lands Trust at Armadale Castle on the Isle of Skye have been in touch to let us know they’ve extended the deadline for this years Princess Margaret of the Isles Prize for Senior Clarsach competition (this year online), until the 30th of April. The prize includes THE CHANCE TO PLAY AT OUR FESTIVAL.
Find out more below…
The competition will be held online this year and is open to all players aged 18 and over. The winner received a £2000 prize and the chance to play at next year’s Edinburgh International Harp Festival; finalists receive an appearance fee of £1000. Information: https://www.armadalecastle.com/clarsach-competition-2021-entry-2/
We hope you enjoy our concerts this year.
Please do support our artists by having a look at the CDs and Books that they have available:
FRIDAY NIGHT
Ingrid Henderson Musician & Iain MacFarlane
SATURDAY NIGHT
Corrina Hewat & David Milligan
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
SUNDAY NIGHT
MONDAY NIGHT
Zoom Sessions – Friday and Sunday Night, 9.30-10.30pm
The late night sessions are a much loved part of our festival. Whilst we can’t perfectly recreate them on zoom, we’re going to have a go! On the Friday and Sunday we’re giving you a chance to play some of your much loved tunes and have a bit of social time with fellow festival goers.
Our session leaders will lead tunes and we would ask you to mute as you play along with them.
ON FRIDAY NIGHT our session leader is Irene Watt, who’ll be joined by her covid bubble – husband Graham and friend Maggie.
ON SUNDAY NIGHT our session leader is Ailie Robertson who you’ll hopefully have enjoyed listening to as part of Friday night’s concert.
HOW TO ACCESS THE SESSIONS:
Email media@harpfestival.co.uk with the subject line SESSIONS and we’ll email you the zoom details. (please be patient for a reply as we are manually doing this)
SESSION MUSIC:
Download the EIHF Late Night Sessions book HERE
And on Saturday Night we have…
EIHF Live!
9.30pm
A first for the festival, we’ll be hosting an after concert chat-show on Facebook live. Expect some familiar faces, good chat, and maybe even a tune or two!
The stream will appear automatically on our Facebook page HERE at 9.30pm.
You do not have to be signed in to Facebook to access the stream.
