Gianetta Baril – Alberta

harpist . Harp to Heart

Spring. What season, oh my! What I can easily say is “definitely not winter!” I love all the others. That said, I’d have to go with Spring as it is so full of possibility, creativity and new life. Until maybe ten years ago, I’d thoughts of myself as an un-creative person because I didn’t compose, paint etc. At some point, I began to realize that my life itself has actually been very creative and NOW I’m old enough to be vulnerable and start doing all that fun, hands on creative stuff! Anyway, it seems that Spring reflects my life the best. – Gianetta

Gianetta Baril and Harp to Heart

At ten years old, having played for only six months, I became a student of the great Judy Loman — a relationship that would go on to define not just my career, but my understanding of personal resilience, friendship and deep love. I followed the path that the musical gift seemed to demand: performing and recording concerti, touring Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and earning accolades as a soloist, including a treasured performance of Oskar Morawetz’s Harp Concerto in the Rudolfinum in Prague. The success was real, but so was a restlessness beneath it — a frustration, even, with an instrument that demanded everything and still left something unresolved.

Thirty years in, I began to find what was missing — not onstage, but in relationship. Co-founding the Canadian International Summer Harp Institute (CISHI) with Elizabeth Volpe-Bligh brought together students from beginners to advanced, aged eighteen to eighty-five, with an international faculty that included Judy Loman, Cristina Braga, Ellen Gibling, and Julia Kay Jamieson. The teaching mattered, but the shared experience and friendships that grew alongside it mattered more.

In 2014, an invitation to teach in Brazil opened a new kind of possibility: I initiated a philanthropic project bringing harps into established music social programmes in Rio. Through fundraising efforts in Canada, I was able to donate fifteen instruments over six years, supporting young harpists as they launched their teaching careers — some of whom I still hear from as they carry on in Brazil and abroad.

By 2018, I was considering retirement, that same restlessness still unresolved. Then in 2020, Covid forced the cancellation of CISHI and halted travel to Brazil. On the fifth morning of a hospital stay that May, I awoke to a clear Heart Message: find a way to bring live harp music safely to people. As a deeply faithful Catholic, my first response was, “How on earth do I do that?! Give me a little more info, Lord!” What followed became the most creative chapter of my forty-five-year career. Within three months, I’d bought a high-roof Ford Transit van and had it converted into a rolling concert hall for my Lyon & Healy 23, Amadei (“beloved of God”). I named the van Mary, and for the next three years she was also my tiny home. With no real plan, I drove wherever restrictions allowed and played from the van. Every time I slid open the side door — my stage curtain — curious people gathered, wondering at first what Harp to Heart was all about, then quickly drawn in by the sound. What opened up, again and again, was a communal space of goodwill, surprise, sadness, personal stories, and joy. Inparking lots, beside seniors homes, in school playgrounds — the harp gave us permission to be vulnerable, and to be comforted in our fear, grief, and loneliness.

During those three years on the road, I gave over 300 live performances, many entirely impromptu, for audiences ranging from three people to three hundred, gathered around the side of my rolling concert hall. I added new styles — improv, lead sheets, even a little “On the Road Again” — pushing far past my classical comfort zone. By the time I finally arrived home in August 2023, Mary, Amadei, my cat Misty, and I had logged 70,000 kilometres crossing Canada and much of the United States. It had been the most demanding stretch of my career, and the restlessness I’d been carrying finally resolved itself — what I found, one stranger at a time at the side of a van, was the profound experience of authentic relationship for which I’d been yearning all along.

Van life is neither easy nor romantic — even less so with a harp in tow. Still, no words can capture my gratitude for the richness of the journey and the joy of connecting with the extraordinary people this long career has brought into my life. Now retired, I’m glad to pass on the performance baton, sharing stories and the occasional bit of wisdom as I watch the ripples flow outward from my students’ work, and now and then hear from people I never knew were listening.

I still play — just for fun now, free to experiment in ways I’d not allowed myself before. My most recent “events” span the spectrum: an all-nighter at a Burning Man–style rave in Mexico, looper pedal and effects board in full action; and, at the other end, composing and recording music with a singer for a contemplative video of Psalm 95, “Come, let us sing to the Lord.”

Thanks to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I’ve been blessed in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I first began moving outside the lines. I wonder what the Lord has in store for me next.

The gift of a toy harp from my parents at age 3 set me on a journey that became a lifelong career. Along the way, sharing my gifts has opened up new horizons for others as well, to discover their own gifts and possibilities.