Goodbye Legal Briefs - Hello International Music Finalist

Two and a half years ago, recently retired lawyer, Alexandra Coursen, began composing music for the harp. She started composing “Namepieces,” a highly specialized form of composition that uses the letters of people’s names to create music. Coursen created Nampieces for friends and family - for baptisms, weddings, anniversaries - and has started accepting commissions to create her Namepieces as gifts. In September 2016, Coursen submitted one of her pieces, Neshama, to “The Future Blend Project,” an international competiton for harp composition - and to her delight, she has been named one of 13 finalists - and the only woman composer among the other finalists, who come from England, France, Netherlands, El Salvador, Denmark, Israel and the USA. Coursen’s commitment to composition intensified in 2016, a year in which she focused on a single question: “What does it mean to be a composer?”, as part of a mentorship project with Grammy-nominated harpist, Deborah Henson-Conant. Many of the finalists have studied composition, and are professional composers. Alexandra has no training in music composition, but played piano when younger, and now plays celtic harp. The Future Blend Competition will be held live in Warwick England on January 7, 2017, in an unusual and historic performance site: a medieval 14th century Alm’s House. There, Neshama will be performed by harpist, Olivia Jageurs, with Coursen sitting at the edge of her seat in the audience. Jageurs is a young, highly-schooled, professional harpist in London. Alexandra is “of retirement age”, has pursued music in her leisure, and lives in dairy country in upstate New York. From these different backgrounds, Alexandra and Olivia use email and Skype to confer about the competition performance - with Alexandra offering Olivia insight into the piece itself and Olivia giving suggestions as to how Alexandra might share that insight in the published manuscript for future players. The Future Blend Project will stream this concert/contest so that anyone with access to the internet can attend - virtually or in person. One of those will be Alexandra’s 92 year-old mother, who will be watching and listening from her nursing home, along with other residents. On the day of the concert, all of the entries will be recorded for a CD that will be available to the public and which helps to fund the Future Blend Project. The Future Blend Project promotes new compositions for the harp, and assists harpists and composers in the process. The harp is one of man’s oldest instruments, yet its expressive potential is being stretched and enlarged by new compositions, and by the Future Blend Project. You can read more about Alexandra’s composition process and her Namepiece project in her blog, Disharmony of the Harp, at www.alexandracoursen.com. You can attend The Future Blend Project harp concert/contest on line at 1 p.m. E.S.T. at http://www.futureblendproject.co.uk/the-hidden-gem-concert-2017.html