July 12, 2017 – Hong Kong – World Harp Congress
As harp players, we spend a lot of time thinking about transport. Stuffing harps into elevators, taxis, trunks, vans, station wagons.
This particular elevator was a tiny one, a slow 14 floors, and it was the elevator to our minuscule AirBnb. There were two elevators for the building – one that went to even-numbered floors and one that went to odd-numbered floors. We were in the even-numbered one. I doubt it was any larger than the odd-numbered one.
That elevator took us down to the street, where we caught another elevator up to an elevated walk-way, across the busy highway that bisects the area we lived in, Wan Chai.
These elevated walkways crossed the highway every two blocks, like footbridge crossing a river of cars, and without them we’d have never gotten where we were going.
Here you can see the traffic below us. Often this road was completely congested.
This is a photo we took in the wall of a shiny building, me, Eleanor Turner and Shelley Fairplay, with two harps and two suitcases full of gear, on our way to our concert.
By the time we got to the concert hall – several elevators, a sweaty walk and two Ubers away, we were being picked up for the trip to the concert hall we were nearly melted and arrived at the concert hall, which was closed for crew lunch — so we found some shade for the harps waited to get into the building.
Where four hours later, we walked on stage and launched into a cool-as-cucumber Blues – just as if it hadn’t taken us all day to get there.
Loved the concert!! – in a place (Hong Kong) where the ushers are beyond diligent at intercepting people trying to sneak a photograph or quick video of performances (they will walk well into a row of seated people whilst waving and tutting to the offender – drawing a huge amount of attention and distraction in an officious but effective manner) – well, you can imagine our delight when DHC gets on the stage and says “I’ve made a special request … you can photograph and video me as much as you like!! Make sure you hashtag “World Harp Congress” “- she was already friends with everyone in the room anyway but that sure gave things a lift – along with the comment that it really wasn’t necessary to have your harp in tune because it was about connection (not perfection) – which got things off with a roaring laugh (yeah – not sure how many of the classical harpists in the room bought that comment 😉 ). The concert was awesome and well worth a trip to Hong Kong!! Thanks for sharing DHC!!