Caroline Mackay – British Columbia

harpist . teacher . singer . High Spirits Music

Spring. If I chose a season that I love best, it would be Spring. As an avant gardener(!), I adore the new shoots and blossoms, while we awaken from winter. I like the cleanup, the careful holding of spaces for the little creatures and insects who will tend the garden for us. I like thinking of Spring as starting in February, around the second week when the light is coming back – that makes it last longer. So even when I look out on a chilly morning and see that it is snowing, I’ll call it SPRING. – Caroline

I was aways a dancer, a singer and a happy little musical child. Any song that made me move made me joyful! I had an early career singing Jazz and Folk music in the Edmonton scene, until one day … came a dazzling “Bolt from the Blue” while I was meditating on a music project with my friend Ruth Cardinal. This unexpected vision made me exclaim: “I could be playing the Celtic Harp!” Until that moment, I had never seen one up close, nor followed modern harp music, but suddenly my spirit was captivated.

Northern Alberta was my playground then and I had not come across any harps, so there was quite a search for someone to guide me in those days before the internet! Eventually, Gordon Ritchie was the player who introduced me to the world of folk harp, and set me on my path. I came across Jack Yule in Midlothian, Scotland, who built me a gorgeous cherry Clarsach with a custom carving, and shipped it to me while I was living on the Piikani Reserve in Southern Alberta, in 1991. I named her Morgaine Tahirih.

I was lovestruck, a total beginner, and couldn’t stop experimenting with the sounds, the rolled chords, the tuning!! …and the way the harp sang with me. Within days, I realized that this was a calling I must follow. Quickly changing my academic plans, I moved to Vancouver Island, British Columbia and found Kathryn Ely of the Victoria Symphony who accepted me as her student. People started appearing at my door for lessons. Triplett Harps allowed me to join their rent-to-own program, until there were enough instruments in the Cowichan Valley to support quite a group of student learners – myself included! Weddings came next, and I must have seen the inside of every little church in every hamlet in the mid-Island in those 7 years.

My first collaborators in teaching and workshops were Sharlene Wallace and Kim Robertson, also my two idols in the Harp World! We were initially introduced at Wells, BC in the 90s, at the Island Mountain Arts Festival hosted by harpist Marilyn Rummel and her husband Joseph Jourdain, builder of Josephus Harps. Kim and Sharlene generously facilitated countless of our HIGH SPIRITS MUSIC retreats over 20 years in the Cowichan and Okanagan Valleys of BC. Hundreds of players from the Western provinces and states would eventually benefit from their instruction and care, from their compositions and recordings, and from their inspiring annual concerts.

In time, I began composing my own Harp Studies Curriculum in 3 volumes, learning all I could from my many teachers and especially from the students. A local artist, Louise Moore, created the beautiful watercolour paintings for the covers. Every summer for 15 years I would lay out all the pages of each book in the beams of sunshine on my studio floor, then revise, edit and bring them more up to date. Eventually we created video recordings of every lesson in the first 2 books of the series, to put online for new students.

Canada Music Week was inspirational – one year I began an exploration of the four seasons, beginning with Okanagan Summer Storm, and my student Aaron Ord played it masterfully at the Kelowna Music School’s Gala Concert in November. The remaining 3 seasons were composed during the next 3 years, and the premiere of Winter Flight was performed by the Okanagan HARP Orchestra in 2017. This orchestra included students and colleagues – playing a dozen harps, cello, accordion and voices.

I started to travel with Celtic Harp & Song, and played in many towns from BC through Ontario, as well as Switzerland, England, The US and New Zealand. In some cases, the Baha’i communities in these countries would invite me to bring the music for special occasions, Holy Days or community events, as my voice lent itself to the spiritual dimension. I met the most amazingly diverse people and gained an appreciation for how much humanity is really one big musical family. I added recordings to my list of adventures, and created 6 full length CDs as well as several singles. Some are available from 9Star Media.

Meanwhile, Harp Life became gregarious when I made friends with a couple of local players, Kate Gibson Oswald and Debi Johnson, and we formed a performing trio named AnamCara, or Soul Friend. For two energetic decades, we arranged songs for our 3 voices, 3 harps, keyboard, percussion, recorder and viola. Gregarious AND Hilarious: way too much laughing! But that was our style; there was always something funny going on, from costume meltdowns to sudden changes in repertoire to lyrics that shouldn’t have been… we are the best of friends!

Two young students, Aaron Ord and Amy Aiken, became part of a second performing group called The Spellbound Harp Trio, and together we arranged music soundtracks, such as the Zelda pieces, and music by the Japanese composers for video games. It was beautiful to stretch our horizons on the harp. Soul Cafe has been another wonderful space to bring together artists and musicians to explore concepts of devotion, community-building and fresh music! This bi-monthly gathering has been ongoing for 5 years.

None of this would have been possible without Daniel Schmitt’s fantastic creative gift for building Harps. We married in 2001, and he immediately joined the realm of Canadian craftsmen, making instruments for dozens of harp students, both a rental fleet and professional instruments. He crafted over 120 of them, in 5 different styles, and all credit goes to him for making a successful DIAMOND HARPS business for us both! Added to this, he was our sound engineer over long years, amplifying sometimes 12 harps at a time.

Daniel unfortunately passed in 2019, and after this I spent two years transforming his wonderful dusty workshop into another creative space, a new teaching studio filled with light and colour, flourishing with plants, artwork and harp sounds! – Caroline