2024–25 Season Harpists

Music of the harp is widely considered pleasurable to the human ear with a sound that can be variously described as beautiful, gently flowing, clear, and brilliant. Due to its open tuning and richness in overtones, it can evoke associations with the celestial or angelic and has had a prime role in sacred music dating back 2,500 years. The harp is one of the rare plucked instruments in an orchestra, but it often gets little airtime, relegated to an accent for dramatic moments. (Thanks to its calming sound, it can certainly be an aural cliché on a mindfulness and meditation app.)  The harp also lends itself to contemporary expressions with a growing body of repertoire and virtuosic performers championing the instrument.   

Click here to learn more about the History of the Harp by Stanford professor Dan Levitan. 

Bing Concert Hall, with its incredible acoustics, provides a fantastic canvas for the lush, reverberant sound profile of the harp. The season-long sonic journey starts with the Western classical harp with that tradition’s foremost practitioner, Xavier de Meistre. From there, we travel and explore the sheer variety of harps across cultures: from the portable folk instruments of Latin America to the plucked zithers of Asia to the kora from the venerable griot traditions of West Africa and on to the harp in American jazz. 
–Laura Evans, Director of Programming and Engagement