Deborah Henson-Conant is a Grammy-nominated electric harp virtuoso with a wicked sense of humor, a gutsy set of vocal chords and a theatrical flair.
She's intimate, inventive, spontaneous and bigger-than-life - and she pulls sounds from the 32 strings of her custom-built electric harp that you'd never expect to hear from the instrument St. Peter hands out at the Pearly Gates: Blues. Jazz. Flamenco. Distortion.
She uses a foot-pedal to capture musical phrases on the fly and loop them together, building a pulse of sound an rhythms she improvises over, and tells stories of her own improbable life as she strides the stage strapped onto her harp like a musical centaur.
Poetic dissonance, movement, story and song – she pulls it all from the world's most cutting edge harp, built for her by the CAMAC company and named after her, the “DHC-Light.”
She's opened for Ray Charles at Tanglewood, toured with the Boston Pops as a featured soloist and with guitar legend Steve Vai as a rock harpist. Her music special "Invention & Alchemy" appeared on PBS Stations throughout the US and she performs her own solo shows in theaters and concert halls around the world.