This means that a harpist has to plan ahead, marking the pedal shifts in the music and learning those pedal shifts as part of the piece of music. There are seven pedals that can each be moved to three notches, raising or lowering the pitch of those seven notes.' 'Out of the 12 notes of a chromatic scale,' Drake explained, 'a harpist can play only seven of them at once.

That choreography does a fine job of upstaging the busy pedal work going on below the strings. In addition to the challenges of moving a harp to gigs, harps are legendarily difficult to tune and to play.Ī harpist's arms and hands move to the music in what appears to be fluid, delicate choreography. 'He didn't understand that I was being very, very careful, but it was because the harp was worth much more than the car.' 'When I did take the harp to the test drive, the salesman kept telling me to be very, very careful not to damage the car,' Drake said. Although she once took her harp to a car dealership to test the fit, these days, she said, 'I can lie in the back of a car and tell if the harp will fit in there.' The harp travels in an enormous crate, which, Drake joked, 'doubles nicely as a coffin or a dressing room.'ĭriving presents its own issues. The third choice is to ship it air freight.'Īir freight, which can take up to 10 days, is a distant third at best. The second choice is to borrow or rent an instrument wherever you're going.

'When you travel with a harp,' she said, 'the first choice is to get your own instrument there by car.

In addition to recitals, chamber music, orchestral performances and Broadway shows, Drake can be heard on several CDs, including one of her own transcriptions of the Bach Cello Suites and the Broadway cast recording of 'The Light in the Piazza.' Victoria Drake, a Milwaukee native who has made an international name as a versatile, freelance harpist, will give three performances in Milwaukee in the coming week.ĭrake, the daughter of Early Music Now founder Thallis Drake, is based in New York. The harp may be an essential, ethereal part of classic afterlife depictions, but here on Earth, life with a harp can be anything but heavenly.

Drake own it choreography