Interview with Harpist Kim Robertson

Apr 23

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Welcome to the Moon Over the Trees Music and Theatre Productions® Podcast bringing people together through collaboration., creativity, and community through the arts. Thank you for joining us this week. I am your host, Maureen Buscareno and I hope to inspire you and to help you discover amazing music and artists from around the world.

Today is the podcast’s first episode which is a chat with harpist/composer Kim Robertson and is a collaboration with The Somerset Folk Harp Festival.

Today’s show is part of a series of interviews focusing on the musicians and artisans involved with The Somerset Folk Harp Festival which takes place every July in Parsippany, NJ. The festival has just added an online platform.

This is a quote from the festival’s website: “No matter where you are in the world or what your playing level, there's something for everyone on our new online platform Somerset Online. We're going to stay connected this summer with our new online festival portal. We have plenty of music genre workshops from the Blues to Scandinavian music on all kinds of harps: single row harps, double-strung harps, cross-strung harps, historic harps, small harps.”

This week’s segment will include an interview with Kim, a preview of one of her workshops at Somerset, and a sample of her amazing harp playing.

Kim Robertson is a world renowned Harpist/composer and is known for her wit, versatility, and virtuosity.

I have had the great fortune of working with Kim for the past ten years at The Somerset Folk Harp Festival as concert manager. I’ve always admired Kim’s ability to move from classical to folk music, to contemporary music so effortlessly. Here’s Kim’s bio taken from the Somerset website:

“As one of the pioneers of the American folk harp, Kim Robertson’s style and approach to the instrument is uniquely personal and original. Trained classically on piano and orchestral harp, she brings a contemporary touch to both her original compositions and her arrangements of Celtic music. Her skill and stage presence as a performer has brought her a loyal following and she is an experienced and sensitive teacher as well. She has many CDs, among them Highland Heart, Shady Grove and Shall We Gather as well as numerous volumes of harp arrangements and several instructional videos. Though she makes her home in Wisconsin, she spends a good deal of the year touring both as a solo artist and with other performers. Kim has presented and performed at nearly every Somerset festival, and with good reason! She's got a clear style and can get everybody, seemingly effortlessly, working together and learning with humor and grace. No matter what the topic, her workshops are packed. Kim received the Somerset Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.”

Links

Kimrobertson.net

Crimson Series of Gurmukhi meditation music in collaboration with vocalist Singh Kaur.

Somersetharpfest.com

Dance of the Lambs https://harpcolumn.com/music/all-music/artists/kim-robertson/dance-of-the-lambs/

https://harpcolumn.com/academy/kim-robertsons-studio/

Suggested songs for beginning harp students

Brian Boru March

Skye Boat Song

All Through the Night

Chanter’s Song

Partial Discography