September 17, 2003
Harpists play from the heart
Professional harp player Pamela Bruner offers local workshop
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Delicate strumming makes healing music.
Guided by professional harpist Pamela Bruner, 17 area therapeutic harpists deepened their understanding of the instrument and mastered playing techniques at an all-day seminar. The Heart to Harp program of the Partners in Prevention Palliative Care sponsored the seminar, which was held on Saturday at the American Legion Hall in Old Mission.
The morning session focused on Creating Music with Love and the afternoon's topic was Making the Music Flow. For harpist Judy Goodrich, the experiences flowed right home with her that evening.
"I went home and played for three more hours," said the Elmwood Township resident, a newer student of the instrument. "It was wonderful, just practicing everything we've learned; Pamela's gift to us was wonderful."
Attendees at the harp seminar brought a range of experience and musical background to the instrument. They learned to play the harp at courses offered by Sharon Olson, director of the Partners in Prevention Palliative Care.
Over the past few years, Olson's Heart to Harp program has spread the joys of harps to dozens of enthusiastic players. In addition, she and the harpists she has taught have brought healing modal music to many people in the area who are ill or experiencing a crisis.
Olson brought Bruner and her husband David Woodworth, a harp maker, to Traverse City for the seminar. Woodworth has been building harps since 1984, making a name for his innovative designs and quality workmanship. Their smaller size and relatively low cost also made them accessible to even beginning musicians, as many students in Olson's Heart to Harp classes were.
"I was just so touched to see all those harps lined up," said Olson, who promotes the harp as a healing instrument. "Just three years ago, it was only the two I had and now there are so many in the area."
Bruner, a professional harpist for 15 years, has released nine compact discs and gives concerts and seminars around the country. She and her husband also attend art fairs to promote both his harps and her music.
Bruner guided seminar participants in the basics of chords and putting together sounds that can easily be played in a therapeutic setting. She also coached them to let go and let the music flow, not to be afraid as they reach out to help others.
"I love playing the harp and performing for people," she said. "But my goal in life is that people are lit up about whatever they do and the harp is just my vehicle for that."
"There is a lot of healing power in music, in particular the harp," Bruner added.
Woodworth can build six harps a month at his Asheville, N.C., workshop. He makes about 65 a year and ships them all over the country and the world; his harps are being played in Russia, Europe and Israel.
He uses a variety of wood, mainly cherry and walnut with an occasional exotic wood, and each instrument includes between four and five and a half octaves. He has been building harps for nearly 20 years, a former furniture maker who was intrigued by the instrument decades ago.
"I decided to build a hammer dulcimer for the fun of it and then a friend asked me to make him one and then another one wanted one," recalled Woodworth of his early years building musical instruments.
He built a harp next, selling it for next to nothing just to get feedback from the musician.
"I was building them in a complete vacuum, there was no one building harps nearby," said Woodworth, who lived in Wisconsin at the time.
While not a player himself, he said Heartland harps are unique because of their curved sound box. Musicians play all kinds of music on them, Woodworth noted, ranging from Celtic to sacred to gospel.
The number of harps in Traverse City and the players' enthusiasm to use the instrument for therapeutic purposes is unusual, he noted.
"This is probably the only place in the country with the greatest concentration of my harps," Woodworth said.