Deborah Henson-Conant - Press Biography
Contact: Michael Belcher- Tel: (781) 483-3556 - Fax: (781) 483-3987
Email: publicity@hipharp.com

Music…Theatre…Comedy…Passion. 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 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 from Scott Simon, Susan Stamberg and Studs Terkel to Charlie Rose and Joan Rivers.

Her DVD & 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 with over 45 minutes of behind-the-scenes features; a multi-camera, surround-sound disc, shot in hi-definition. 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 and fans of all ages who want to be both moved and entertained. The front rows of her concerts are often filled with families, brought by 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.

PHOTO: Brion Price -- Hi-Res version available from our Publicity page (see menu above)

WHO IS DEBORAH HENSON-CONANT and
WHAT'S SHE DOING TO THAT HARP!?
(A Short Biography)

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 ten 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 said to 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 website: “HipHarp.com.”

Deborah Henson-Conant has toured with the Boston Pops as a guest soloist, premiered her own orchestral works with symphonies throughout the US, 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, 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 (she called it a “sissy” instrument when she first saw it), 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 (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 play exquisitely delicate solo passages.