Deborah Henson-Conant
To describe Deborah Henson-Conant is nearly impossible. She’s a
cross-genre, blues-flamenco-Celtic-funk-folk-jazz dynamo. She tells tall tales
with the ease of a stand-up comic. She solos and wails like a rock guitarist.
She turns music into theater and theater into something lyrical. See her once
and you’ll never look at the harp the same way again.
She
performs in symphony halls as a soloist with major orchestras, and she plays
intimate shows in clubs, festivals and theaters internationally. She has
toured with the Boston Pops, opened for Ray Charles at Tanglewood, jammed
onstage with Bobbie McFerrin and offstage with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, and
starred in the PBS special Celtic
Harpestry. She’s been featured on shows ranging from CBS’ Sunday
Morning and NBC’s Today Show to
NPR’s “Weekend Edition” and the Food Network’s Warped,
and interviewed by hosts and journalists including Scott Simon, Susan Stamberg,
Studs Terkel, Charlie Rose and Joan Rivers.
Her
DVD and CD project with the Grand Rapids Symphony, Invention
and Alchemy, received a Grammy nomination and is appearing on PBS stations
nationwide. The project features her one-woman show with 80-piece
orchestra. The DVD is a full-length concert program – a multi-camera,
surround-sound disc, shot in hi-definition – with more than 45 minutes of
behind-the-scenes features. It has an Emmy-winning director, Grammy-winning
sound engineers and a program of symphonic music theater that brings Deborah’s
show closer than the front row.
Deborah’s
audiences are as diverse as her music: musicians who want to see what it
takes to create a unique musical style along with fans of all ages who want to
be both moved and entertained. The front rows of her concerts are often filled
with families – parents who want their children to see firsthand what it means
to passionately follow your own creative path.
Deborah Henson-Conant: a prolific composer, a revolutionary
player and a performer of irrepressible spirit.
Who is Deborah
Henson-Conant and What’s She Doing to That Harp!?
Deborah Henson-Conant is a Grammy-nominated artist who sings and plays the harp,
tells stories and composes symphonic music that runs the gamut from bombastic to
tender. She has been described as “the wild woman of the harp” by bandleader
Doc Severinsen and “the talented love-child of André Previn and Lucille
Ball” by NPR’s Scott Simon. Her playing ranges from raucous to delicate, and
her performances blur the line between musical performance and theatrical event.
Deborah herself is impossible to categorize. She has made her
own path, composing musical theater since the age of 12, first studying
classical harp, then developing her own version of swing and Latin jazz and
finally synthesizing all three elements into a new genre of musical performance.
Her shows mix jazz, folk and flamenco with a theatrical narrative of
storytelling and humor.
As a child, Deborah was passionate about music, but disdainful
of lessons, and spent her time composing. Her parents tried every instrument
they could think of to lead her to serious study, with mounting frustrations
from both sides. When a rented harp showed up in the living room just as Deborah
hit puberty, she grudgingly took a half-dozen lessons, then wailed, “This is a
sissy instrument! And no one will hold hands with me if I have calluses on my
fingers!”
For the next 10 years, Deborah didn’t touch a harp. Then
suddenly her college band needed a harpist and those six lessons made her the
resident expert. She studied music by day and played popular harp music in posh
dining rooms by night. Then one night she’d had enough of both classical music
and background performances. She dragged her six-foot gilded harp from a
Boston
hotel restaurant into an adjacent jazz club and asked the bandleader, “Can I
sit in?” She started jamming on the blues and has never looked back. She’s
now made more than a dozen recordings, from jazz to children’s music, and has
become synonymous with her Web site, HipHarp.com.
Deborah Henson-Conant has toured with the Boston Pops as a
guest soloist, premiered her own orchestral works with symphonies throughout the
U.S.; toured jazz clubs in Germany and Celtic festivals in France; opened for
Ray Charles at Tanglewood; starred in the PBS special Celtic Harpestry; been
featured on NBC, CBS, CNN and NPR and has hosted TV shows for BET and BBC
affiliates. She’s been interviewed by Charlie Rose, Joan Rivers, Billy Taylor,
Studs Terkel, Scott Simon, Jamie Gangel, and Susan Stamberg. She’s the
Grammy-nominated artist and star of “Invention & Alchemy,” her one-woman
show with full orchestra, which debuted on PBS stations nationwide in March
2007.
Henson-Conant has revolutionized her instrument. She’s
brought vibrant passion and individuality to its sound, and in the process she
herself has been transformed. Her work is an exploration of possibilities, a
transformation that moves her audience out of the ordinary and into the
extraordinary. If you’re one of those people who thinks a harp is meant to
soothe the savage beast, think again. This time it’s the savage beast who’s playing
the darned thing!
Why the harp? Deborah never wanted to
play the harp, yet her own struggle with it is, in part, what has created her
persona.
Already a composer by preference, the lack of music written for
the harp forced her to become a prolific composer (she now composes nearly all
the music she performs), writing both solo harp music and symphonic music
featuring her harp and voice.
When she found herself chafing under the confines of the
classical music world, she developed her own style of swing and Latin jazz by
emulating jazz pianists, guitarists and horn players. She explored her
instrument’s fascinating roots in other cultures, from
Mexico
to the Celtic Isles. She then incorporated these elements into her own
compositions, landed a record contract with the pre-eminent contemporary jazz
label at the time (GRP) and became known as the world’s premiere jazz harpist.
When jazz itself began to confine her, she expanded to
incorporate flamenco, blues and folk, and when the harp constrained her
physically, she had a new instrument built for her, a solid-body electric
“body harp” that combines the portability and volume of an electric guitar
with the technique of a harp. (See more about the body harp below.)
When symphonies asked her to perform as a soloist, and she had
no “orchestra charts,” she began to orchestrate her own works and has now
created a body of music for solo harp virtuoso and orchestra.
In short, the very “limitations” of her instrument have led
to the richness of her performances and have helped her create a genre that is
hers alone.
Deborah’s signature instrument: In
1998 she convinced French harp builder Joel Garnier to create an instrument for
her that she could strap on her body. This electric blue
harp-with-the-soul-of-an-electric-guitar is now her signature instrument. With
each string individually electrified, the “body harp” allows her to soar
over the brass section of an orchestra or to play exquisitely delicate solo
passages.
Composer, performer,
singer, songwriter, author, cartoonist, entertainer, comedian, electric harpist
– mix those together and you can just begin to describe Deborah Henson-Conant.
Whether she’s tearing up the Edinburgh Fringe festival with her one-woman
show, touring the country with the Boston Pops, opening for Ray Charles at
Tanglewood, or mesmerizing a theater-full of children at the Kennedy Center,
Henson-Conant, live on stage, is a powerful experience.
Henson-Conant rocked
onto the jazz charts in the late ‘80s with her albums on the GRP label. Since
then she’s established her own record label and released a dozen other albums,
from Latin jazz to Celtic, blues, folk-pop and spoken word. She’s jammed,
on-stage and off, with the likes of Steven Tyler, Bobby McFerrin, Rufus Reid,
Keith Lockhart, Doc Severinsen and Marvin Hamlisch. She’s a Grammy-nominated
artist and star of “Invention & Alchemy,” her one-woman show with full
orchestra, which debuted on PBS stations in March 2007. She’s premiered her
compositions with countless symphonies, lectured at the Paris Conservatory, and
received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and “Meet the
Composer.” She’s been featured on NBC, CBS, and CNN, and starred in the PBS
Special “Celtic Harpestry.”
Henson-Conant has
revolutionized her instrument. She’s brought vibrant passion and individuality
to its sound, and in the process she herself has been transformed. Her work is
an exploration of possibilities – a transformation that moves her audience out
of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.
But wait till you see that
harp.
Deborah Henson-Conant is a
Grammy-nominated artist who sings and plays a 36-string
custom-built electric “harness harp” in styles ranging from full-out bluesy
to heart-wrenching ballad. She has toured with the Boston Pops, starred
in a PBS special, lectured at the Paris Conservatory
and played at the
Kennedy
Center
. The Grammy-nominated star has been featured on NBC, CBS, CNN and NPR.
Deborah’s albums range from Latin
jazz to Celtic, blues, folk-pop and spoken word. But on stage, she’s electric,
bringing vibrant passion to a powerful musical journey, taking audiences along
for the ride. See her once and you’ll never view or hear a harp the
same way again.
