HIP HARP FANTASIES with Deborah Henson Conant

• Presented by TTI & Guy Masterson in association with Deborah Henson-Conant & hipharp.com
• Played Edinburgh 2000 at Assembly Rooms

Step into the mind of Deborah Henson-Conant. A mind where watermelons are as sexy as Sean Connery, where dogs go back to school to get their pedigrees and, in Heaven, Jimi Hendrix turns up the distortion on his harp.

Henson-Conant is a genre-hopping musician, storyteller and comedian. She sings, tells tall stories, accompanies herself on the harp... a cobalt-blue, solid-body, strap-on electric harp... and changes forever the way the World sees the ancient instrument.

Her music is eclectic - jazz-pop-comedy-folk-blues-flamenco-Celtic crossover. And her songs and stories range from the touching to the hilarious. "Congratulations, You Made it this Far," - DHC's answer to "Happy Birthday" - made National Symphony Orchestra conductor Marvin Hamlisch blurt out, "I want everybody to hear this song!"

This is one show that proves the harp is so much more than heavenly.

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Hip Harp Reviews

"Over the top? Well, yes, but why be anything else when you're dressed in a miniskirt, sparkly strapless top and cowboy boots, and you swan on stage looking like the prow of a ship, strapped to a glittering, blue harp that can make you sound like Jimi Hendrix?... all breathy reminiscence one minute, gentle nocturnal murmers from the harp, then a shake of those cascading rainbow hair-braids and that soaringly powerful voice lets rip." (The Scotsman)

"Few have blown the cobwebs off harp music quite so comprehensively as California's Deborah Henson-Conant ... Dazzling range and depth of technique ... A warmly engaging, energetic stage manner ... A memorable show .. Unerring flair and finesse, while her bright-toned, muscular singing proves equally adept at switching between styles." (Metro)

"This is one of those cross-genre shows which defies classification...Debora Henson-Conant is one part comedian, one part storyteller and one part harpist...comparisons with Phoebe from Friends - except of course, Henson-Conant can play her instrument. Wonderfully." (The List)

"Deborah Henson-Conant is no stranger to Scotland and this show is designed to take her mini-skirted harp radicalism to a wider audience. ...she has always been a likeable personality with her humour, an allegedly unAmerican sense of irony, and appetite for self-put-downs. ... Her tale of macho boston pooches and tap-dancing German shepherds is genuinely funny, her song to the man in the moon moving" (The Herald)

"Imagine the talented love-child of André Previn and Lucille Ball." (National US Radio)

"She plays stuff you just wouldn't think could possibly come from the instrument that St. Peter hands out to new arrivals at the pearly gates." (Grand Rapids Press)

"A combination of Leonard Bernstein, Steven Tyler and Xena the Warrior Princess." (The Boston Globe)

"She's doing for the harp what Elvis and Chuck Berry did for the guitar!" (Denver Post)

Deborah Henson-Conant: Deborah started improvising stories with music on her grandmother's piano when she was three, but refused point blank to take lessons. Her parents tried every instrument they could think of on her - even the harp - but she kept saying no. Until her college band needed a harpist and she decided to give the 47-string monster another go.

It clicked. She paid her way through a composition and conducting course at U.C. Berkeley, playing "Stardust" to cocktail lounges and dining rooms. In 1981, she produced and starred in her own operetta, "The Golden Cage", then headed to New York with hopes of Broadway. While Broadway thought about it, Deborah was growing tired of playing 'for your dining pleasure' in a tiny Boston restaurant. Dragging her harp into the jazz lounge, she asked to sit in, and started learning bebop and blues.

She swapped the cocktail dresses for cowboy boots and strapless tops, formed her Jazz Harp Trio, won the Boston Award for Outstanding Instrumentalist and an NEA grant to study jazz, and continued to write musical theatre; her compositions won two Massachusetts Fellowships and grants from Massachusetts Arts Council. Deborah has also worked with the Boston Pops, the Buffalo Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Pops, Prague Radio Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony.

After talkshow host Charlie Rose put her on national TV, and the President of GRP records promptly called to offer Deborah a contract (see discography). She has built a strong reputation for combining music, story and theatre so tightly that the Boston Globe couldn't decide whether to send a drama or music critic. (They sent both!)