{"id":4453,"date":"2016-05-19T20:16:33","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T20:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harpblog.info\/?p=4453"},"modified":"2023-02-16T19:16:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T17:16:39","slug":"harpes-au-max-2016-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/en\/news\/harpes-au-max-2016-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Harpes au Max 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is no secret that chez Camac, we organise and sponsor festivals<\/a>\u00a0more\u00a0than we do competitions.\u00a0Competitions are important and necessary, and we do also support them – but our hearts are more in festivals, because they are more fun. Music is something we believe to be\u00a0very spacious, very large. It is\u00a0full of love for\u00a0many things, many different styles and many different lives within it. Its\u00a0infinite\u00a0horizons unfurl better in the\u00a0heady and joyful atmosphere of a festival, than\u00a0during the tension of a competition.<\/p>\n

Harpes au Max<\/a> is a particularly\u00a0special festival. Firstly, it takes place at home. The artistic relations team\u00a0are constantly travelling, but the core of our team – the craftsman who make your harps – stay at our ateliers in Mouzeil. Harpes au Max<\/a>, in Mouzeil’s\u00a0local district of Ancenis, is a chance for us all to\u00a0celebrate why we make harps, together. What would we do with our harps, if there were no artists who loved to play them?<\/p>\n

\"Thomas<\/a>

Photo: Deborah Henson-Conant<\/p><\/div>\n

Secondly, Harpes au Max<\/a> is not actually organised by us. Instead, it is a collaboration between the civic authorities, and us as a local business. Jakez Fran\u00e7ois is the artistic director, \u00a0responsible for the programming, and we also supply the harps and organise the somewhat acquired art of transporting seventy-five of them to over sixty performances in three days. But everything else – the hotels, the airport pickups, the constant transport of artists\u00a0throughout the region, the catering, the halls, the outreach work and the press – is done by the\u00a0Municipal Community of the Pays d’Ancenis (COMPA<\/a>).\u00a0As Jakez said in his closing speech, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Challain and her team at the COMPA had more or less come to know more about the harp than we do, including being able to give detailed explanations of the instrument’s development from the bow and arrow, to Erard’s double-action mechanism…<\/p>\n

Apart from the fact that all this extremely intricate and absolutely essential organisation ran without a hitch, the COMPA’s involvement also means that Harpes au Max<\/a> is not only a harp festival for harpists, but a harp festival for the general public. Without harpists, we would make no harps – and without the general public, there would be no musicians. Over five thousand visitors attended 2016’s festival, and every single event was packed. This enthusiasm and curiosity was mirrored by the COMPA’s team of sixty-five volunteers, who\u00a0donated their bank holiday weekend more or less 24\/7 to this celebration of our instrument.<\/p>\n

Myriam Serfass, who was here with her ensemble Harpo M\u00e9lusine, asked her driver about\u00a0how he came to volunteer:<\/p>\n

“I was watching The Voice<\/a> with my wife, and I really enjoyed it. So I googled Lena Woods, who was on it<\/a>. I found Harpo M\u00e9lusine’s blog<\/a>, on which there’s something about Lena, because she was one of your students. You also had a link to Camac Harps. And I said to myself: I know Camac, they are local to me! I went to the Camac site<\/a>, found Harpblog<\/a>, and the information about Harpes au Max<\/a>! Et voil\u00e0, that’s how I signed up to volunteer at Harpes au Max.”<\/p>\n

\"Las<\/a>

Las Familias – a band made up of families playing music together – open Harpes au Max with a rousing fanfare!<\/p><\/div>\n

The festival programme<\/a> itself could not have been broader. From factory tours<\/a> to a special collection about the harp<\/a> at the Ancenis town library, from a cinema programme<\/a>\u00a0to an opening fanfare<\/a>, this was a festival in all senses of the word – of music, of the harp, and of regional business and culture. The festival village in front of the theatre celebrated local vintners and other produce; harps were displayed around town in the windows of shops and private houses. This is before we even get to the actual musical programme.<\/p>\n

Jakez Fran\u00e7ois’s festival concept is based around a set of top-level, multi-genre headline acts, and a touring carousel of harp ensembles performing up to seven times a day throughout the region. This year, we welcomed ensembles from Wales (Dynamic Harps<\/a>); France (Harpo M\u00e9lusine<\/a> and Hexarpa<\/a>), Malaysia (Cempaka and Penang Harp Ensembles<\/a>), and – winning the Camac Big Travel Prize – the Tasmanian Harp Ensemble<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"gars<\/a>

Bravo les gars! The Camac boys get a big cheer at the Ensembles Concert<\/p><\/div>\n

They performed indoors, outdoors, in front of the Ch\u00e2teau and in the Super-U, at the train station, in the library, in arts centres, churches and market squares. They all got fit, repeatedly packing and unpacking the ensemble tour van, and formed unbreakable bonds<\/a> with their lovely assistants, the Camac boys! Many thanks to all of them for working so hard, and giving such a lot of pleasure to their impromptu, delighted audiences.<\/p>\n

Our ensembles’\u00a0achievements culminated in a big,\u00a0joint\u00a0concert in the Ancenis theatre on Sunday, May 13th. The Tasmanians had organised a backdrop of stunning photos of their beautiful island; the Malaysians taught the audience how to play the harp with a special song; Dynamic Harps combined pedal harps, lever harps and the DHC Blue Light<\/a>. Myriam Serfass and Harpo M\u00e9lusine also featured song, electric guitar and Leonidas Rondon’s fabulous cuatro playing; Hexarpa is a professional ensemble, with ambitious own arrangements of big repertoire works.\u00a0Each ensemble received a well-deserved standing ovation, and each brought something original to the stage.<\/p>\n

The headline acts\u00a0also presented what has to be more or less the complete spectrum of the harp. The festival opened with Harps of the World<\/a>:\u00a0the Turkish \u00e7eng (\u015eirin Pancaro\u011flu with Bora Uymaz, the Ukrainian bandura (Taras Yanitsky), the South American llanera (Eduardo Betancourt and Leonard Jacome, with Leonidas Rondon on cuatro), and – for the first time in France – the Chinese Konghou (Wu Lin).<\/p>\n

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\"Myrdhin<\/a>

Myrdhin with his metal-strung Ulysse<\/p><\/div>\n

At the same time, over at the Eglise du vieux bourg in Saint-Sulpice-des-Landes, Duo ars Celtica<\/a> performed a quintessentially Celtic programme<\/a> – or even, further back than the Celts, in the Druidic tradition. It was also a Camac first, being the first concert Myrdhin has given\u00a0on the metal-strung Ulysse<\/a> we have built especially for him.<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether you had opted for\u00a0world harps or druidic ones, the festival’s opening\u00a0evening was far from over! Two later concerts also took place: jazz in the Ancenis Chapelle des Ursulines<\/a>, with Tara Minton, Tom Early and Ed Babar, and Irish folk-pop with Ranagri<\/a> in Riaill\u00e9. We are huge fans of both these bands, very different from each other and both creating wonderful new roles for both pedal and lever blue harps.<\/p>\n

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