A chance meeting on a train led to a new instrument appearing at a concert in Canberra.
The Harmony Harp is a harp adapted to be played by people with no ability to read conventional musical notation, and perhaps people with some mental disability.
On a train between Sydney and Melbourne in 2017, pianist Andrew Rumsey whose brother Danny has down syndrome happened to meet a fellow passenger, a German who turned out to be the daughter of an inventor of a special musical instrument.
"We were sitting next to each other and it just came about that we got talking and it turned out that we both had brothers with down syndrome," he said.
Her name was Barbara Vee, and her father, Hermann, had invented this simplified instrument and christened it the Vee Harp.
Renamed as its Australian trade name, the Harmony Harp, it is like a cross between a harp and a zither, and Andrew decided he must have one for his own brother.
"She started talking to me about this instrument and I thought I must go and see it."
Andrew is a highly accomplished classical pianist who has played in Carnegie Hall in New York. He also gives concerts in Europe and so when he was next in Germany, he bought a harp and brought it back for his brother.
"From the day he got it, he's been playing it," David Rumsey said. "Danny took to the harp like a duck to water. He now enjoys practising every day and immersing himself in the wonderful world of music. He was playing complete pieces on the day his harp arrived."
He had tried other instruments like the drums but got nowhere because they were beyond his mental capacity.
But the Harmony Harp is easy. The innovation is to have a very simple way of reading music through a pattern of dots lying under the strings of a very simplified version of a harp. The player plucks according to where the dots are and, lo and behold, music emerges.
Danny played it in 2020 in Parliament House. He also holds world records for down syndrome swimming, and has competed in Taiwan, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Australia.
"Conventional musical notation doesn't lend itself to people with a disability," Andrew Rumsey said, but the new-fangled harp does. "It uses it's own notation and is as user-friendly as an instrument can be. It is an absolute game-changer for music therapy, early childhood music, aged care."
Danny will not be playing at the Wesley Music Centre on July 16. His brother Andrew will take over the harp because Danny has broken a bone.
The Australian composer Sally Greenaway who is based in Canberra has arranged one of her own compositions for the harp, and that will be played in the concert. Most of the concert will be works for cello and piano, with the special harp interlude.
Andrew on the piano will be accompanied by the cellist David Pereira in Cesar Franck's cello sonata.
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