A Message from the President - September 2009

Welcome to a new season!

We have a lot of exciting news for you, including some very nice surprises.

The Harp Society has grown a bit, we now have 42 members and a few of our new members are young students of the harp, which is so encouraging.

This year’s annual General Meeting took place at Judy Loman’s home. It was nice and cozy, and an informal and friendly atmosphere was added to when some of the members present played the new Aoyama Harp Judy had on display. We were delighted to learn from Judy who was in Japan this past summer that Mr. Aoyama from Aoyama Harps donated the grand concert pedal harp to the Faculty of Music at University of Toronto. Judy Loman will dedicate the harp in a special concert at Walter Hall on Nov 1^st with Mr. Aoyama in attendance. Although HS is not organizing this, all members are invited to attend and we may consider this wonderful harp event, led by our leading harpist, as the opening of our new season.

In the past spring we held our Scholarship Auditions and we continue with our proud tradition of presenting our winning students in a “Holiday Jump Start” concert on the 21^st of November. This year we are fortunate to have Andrew Chan Harp Orchestra opening the concert and this is very special to see and hear. Admissions will be free with donations accepted towards the Scholarship Fund.

In March 2010 our guests will be a couple from the Philadelphia Symphony Harpist Elizabeth Hainen and her husband, Percussionist David Hainen.

The season of Fall 2010 will open with the Russian Harpist Natalia Shamayeva. Natalia will stay for a while and give workshops and recitals and we hope to organize a symposium of harpists from North America to which our colleagues from Ottawa, Montreal, New York and around Toronto will be invited. Please watch the website for further details.

Our bag of treats also extends to the spring of 2011. Our Biannual Scholarship Auditions will take place and also our first ever Composition Competition will be adjudicated in June 2011.

The Composition Competition is a much-awaited event and you can find details on the home page of our website. While you are there you may notice we have a new look and also a button to click to hear the music of the 4 Seasons Harp Quartet. This is thanks to our new, very talented Webmaster Kate Murphy.

At elections this year we bid farewell to Liliana Dimitrijevic who was our Vice-President for the past 4 years. She has been instrumental in getting the Harp Society back on its feet and keeping things run as smoothly as possible. Also big thanks go to Jovan Dimitrijievic for his good work as Webmaster in the past year, I understand he is off to study piano in Germany and we wish him all success.

We are lucky to have new Vice–President July Spring who is in her second season with the Toronto Symphony and new in town and we wish her warm welcome and a great time staying in Toronto.

In closing I thank all who came to the meeting and those who could not attend but who sent their comments for consideration. Also many thanks for voting back our wonderful treasurer Jane Millar who has her finger-tips on the financial pulse of our society without which we could not do. And my personal thanks to each of you for voting me in for two more years.

Wishing each of you a very fruitful season and remember Salzedo’s famous words:

“There is nothing difficult, only new, unaccustomed things”.

Vera Stern,
President