Glass Harp

I went to an amazing concert last night. I was a little skeptical about going to see Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Grieg performed on a glass harp for 15 Euro. Don't get me wrong, I love classical music (it reminds of my previous life after all), but I'm also on a budget and really cheap. Fortunately, my Aussie friends talked me into it.

What is a glass harp, anyway? It's essentially a piano made of wine glasses. The duo that performed last night has the biggest glass harp in the world with 57 glasses. They commissioned a glass company to make them 2,000 wine glasses of various sizes and they chose 57 of them to get the right pitches. The couple plays on the same instrument and it's really incredible how coordinated they are - it's not surprising given the amount of time they practice together, but it's not that big an instrument and one could easily get in the other's way. In fact, in one of the pieces they kept rotating positions, so one would be on the left and cross over to the right. It reminded me of figure skaters and how magical it looks when they are able to seemlessly move together.

The instrument creates a very unique sound. Some of the pieces they played could have been part of the Harry Potter score. It has that fantasy-like quality to it.

To top it off, the venue was perfect, being performed in the courtyard of Santo Stefano. I am unclear on the history, but there is a cluster of 7 churches (it might actually only be three, but locals call it sette chiesse or "seven churches"). Regardless, it is a beautiful brick building from the 5th or 8th or 13th century (or a combination thereof).

Here are few pictures of the performance:


From afar.





So cool!