Ann Heymann: “The harp composes and the harp arranges and my hands are trained by it.”

My dad was a scientist and a genius, and I don’t use that term lightly.  He always said that when it comes to truly intelligent people the more they learn, the more they realize how much they don’t know.  It takes curiosity, humility, and a sense of awe to realize there is so much more to learn.  When I think of Ann Heymann all of these ideals come to mind.  Even after her 50+ year career she is still finding new and exciting avenues of discovery and even rediscovering works that she has previously recorded. While she was training horses a friend gave her a copy of The Bunting Manuscripts and she became enamored with how Bunting described the harp tradition as he witnessed it in the 18th century. She studied dressage in horses and had a great respect for tradition and understood there were reasons for doing things a certain way that we might not be able to speculate on. And so, she  thought, ok, they played on the left shoulder, I’ll do it that way.Ann is extremely generous with her research and music.  She is a firm believer that the center of research for the Early Irish Harp needed to be in Ireland so she inspired Siobhan Armstrong to start The Historical Harp Society of Ireland. This interview is being split into two parts.  There is just so much extraordinary information being shared that I want to make sure you get to hear it all and become inspired.In editing this podcast I have listened to it many times and each time I glean something new.  Check out the podcast notes for quotes from Ann and links to some of the books, albums, people and places mentioned.A big thank you to the folks at Temple Records in Scotland for giving me permission to use some of Ann’s recordings on this podcast.  Check out their website https://www.templerecords.co.uk/ LINKS:Ann’s website: http://www.annheymann.com/Ann and Charlie Heymann’s band Clairseach: http://www.clairseach.com/ https://festival.irishharp.org/coaching/ann-heymannThe Bunting Collection at Queen’s University Belfast: http://digital-library.qub.ac.uk/digital/collection/p15979coll9 The Robert Ap Huw Manuscript: https://www.jstor.org/stable/841428?seq=1 St. Mogue Harp: http://www.earlygaelicharp.info/mogue/ Temple Records: https://www.templerecords.co.uk/