HARP SIGHTING: COURTNEY HERSHEY BRESS AND STYLE 100

Colorado Symphony's harpist Courtney Hershey Bress
with Lyon & Healy Style 100 Concert Grand harp.
Photographed by: Todd Rosenberg

Article in The Denver Press, January 27, 2012
"CSO Harpist Courtney Hershey Bress to Perform Rare Piece by Composer Carl Oberthur with Colorado Symphony."

TECH TALK: HARP REGULATION: WHAT IS IT ANYWAY?

We are pleased to welcome again harp technician and guest author Steve Moss of The Harp Herald who presents a series of informative articles to our blog about harp care. In today's article, Steve explains what takes place during a routine harp regulation appointment.

We'd like to thank master harp technician Peter Wiley and harpists Peggy Skomal and Paul Baker, who kindly agreed to an impromptu photo shoot for Steve's article. On with the Tech Talk!

Have you ever wondered what goes on when you bring your harp to a technician for a regulation? In a nutshell, a harp regulation is a periodic maintenance service designed to keep your harp playing and sounding its best.

A harp regulation normally includes a complete inspection of your harp’s condition, replacement of short-lived parts such as pedal felts, adjustments to compensate for the changes a harp undergoes over time, noise elimination, and adjustment of action parts to improve intonation.

The steps below are the ones that I use for each one of my customers. These steps may differ slightly from what your technician may do, but basically the end result remains the same. Let’s look at the whole process of harp regulation, step by step:

HARP SIGHTING: ROSAMOND BERNIER WITH SALZEDO HARP

Rosamond Bernier, the glamorous lady of high end arts and culture events, has recently published her autobiography Some of My Lives. Writer, editor, founder of the arts magazine L'oeil and friend to many artists and composers, Bernier was also a student of Carlos Salzedo, performing in a Youth Concert series with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 16. Beautiful!