Deborah Henson-Conant
Low Tech
Cutting Edge
by Kerry Dexter

Though she regularly performs with orchestras, Deborah Henson-Conant doesn't fit the image of the studied classical harpist. She's recently released a disc of Celtic music, but folk harp is not her category either. More likely to wear black leather and braids than flowing robes to a show, Henson-Conant defies categories, causing one reviewer to suggest "Imagine the talented love child of Andre Previn and Lucille Ball..."

The images Henson-Conant saw as a child didn't lead her to think the harp would be her instrument — neither the flowing robes of ethereal classical players nor the Mexican men she saw playing folk harps in the street during her childhood in California seemed to fit her ideas. Her parents, recognizing her bent toward music, tried out a number of instruments with her, including the concert grand harp. "Of course, it's pretty," she recalled, "and my first thought was 'Oh, wow!' — but I knew right off the bat that those images of 'lady harpists' were just not interesting to me, and because all the street harpers I'd seen were men, to my child's mind that meant I couldn't do that, either." Eventually, her parents gave up on lessons for the young Deborah, and her mother spent about an hour showing her what she knew about chords on the piano, and then left her to improvise. "That was a very important hour in my musical development," the harpist remarked.

Henson-Conant taught herself guitar and sang folksongs in school, as well as inventing music for class musicals on the piano. When she got to college, she was part of a music group who needed someone to play the harp. " 'You at least know how to tune the thing,' they said, 'so why don't you go and take a few lessons?' I was finally ready," she said. "I had a practicing mind, which I think is like a meditational mind. And I don't know too many children who meditate."

It was a struggle, though, to learn the harp, to learn the classical repertoire, and to learn to read music. Meanwhile, Henson-Conant looked around for a job to help pay her college bills. She knew that upscale restaurants often hired harpers to provide background music for dining, and she got such a job. She was to play for four hours a night — and she only knew a half hour's worth of music and hadn't yet mastered reading skills. "Anyone can learn to read music," she explained, "but really slowly. And I knew that the diners might not care if I only knew 30 minutes of music, but the restaurant staff would kill me after the first night. So I started improvising, for survival." This led to a vital revelation. " I suddenly linked two ideas — this classical instrument and this classical piece I'd been playing , and all my years of fooling around, making things up — I could put the two together — and make a living at it!" This discovery caused Henson-Conant to take her harp across the hall at the restaurant to the lounge where a jazz combo was playing and ask, "Mind if I sit in?"