Sarah Pagé – Québec

harpist . composer . producer . koto player

I fell in love with the harp the first time I saw Harp Marx play. There’s something fascinating about the stillness within chaos his performances convey that had a huge impact on me as a child. I still think of the harp as having that fundamentally arresting nature and Harpo remains my musical north star. I didn’t have access to an instrument or teacher until I was 19 and I will forever be grateful to Olga Gross and Jennifer Swartz for the incredible amount of support and formation they gave me. I was lucky enough to be at music school in Montreal when the music scene was exploding and I had a lot of friends and teachers who encouraged me to experiment, improvise and join bands which has led to a fairly varied career. I’ve done a lot of touring, collaborated with musicians from a lot of different backgrounds and made a lot of albums. I’m very much a product of my incredibly healthy musical environment with the added boost of Caroline Lizotte being close by for some extra inspiration. I’m currently living in Morin-Heights and working on composing and producing from a little studio I built. Being in the Laurentian mountains means that winter defines a great deal of my life but it also mirrors the stillness within chaos that I’m often aspiring to in my music. – Sarah

Tracing the musical trajectory of harpist, composer, producer and koto player Sarah Pagé is quite the task—one would have to draw long, constellation-like shapes across genres, borders and histories. She is perhaps best known as a founding member of roots rockers The Barr Brothers, but a brief consideration of her resume reveals the fact that she’s equally at home within traditions as without them. Her latest release Metamorphose, affirm this versatility and reveals Pagé as one of Canada’s most accomplished experimentalists. She can regularly be heard on radio and television in Canada, the US, UK, France and Japan. She appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 2012 and 2014. She has also performed at festivals all over the world alongside such luminaries as Lhasa DeSela, Nadah El Shazly, Esmerine, Joni Void, and Patrick Watson.

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