Huron Harp School works towards Kingsbridge show

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

For Sharon Johnston of the Huron Harp School (HHS), it was love at first pluck. Already an accomplished pianist, when Johnston enrolled in a harp class through the Goderich Celtic Roots Festival’s annual Celtic College in the mid-1990s, she was just interested in trying a new instrument. What she found instead was a lifelong passion. “If you ever sit down and play the harp, you just fall in love with it. You can’t make a bad sound on a harp - even when you’re first starting out, you sound beautiful,” she told The Citizen. “That’s what happened to me. I put a harp in my arms, and I just couldn’t let go.”

 

That first spark of stringed bliss was quickly kindled into the blazing fire of creative spirit, and Johnston was inspired to spread the flames by educating others. She opened the HHS in 2006, and never looked back.

 

Twenty years in business is a major milestone, but Johnston believes that her school’s greatest accomplishment shouldn’t be measured in years. “What I’m proud of with my harp school is that we’ve created a community of people who are all at different levels and play music together,” she pointed out.

 

Building an educational environment that helps harpists flourish wasn’t part of her original plan. Johnston started out by offering private harp lessons, but quickly discovered that there’s strength in numbers. “It was more satisfying for me to teach in a group and see how much they got out of being together,” she explained. “It’s just more satisfying for them to see who else has the same challenges as they do, and to make music together.” 

 

Many of Johnston’s students are adults hoping to take up the harp later in life, just as she did. Some arrive to their first class with many years of musical experience - others are learning to read music for the very first time. What they all have in common is the desire to learn.

 

Accepting differently-abled students over the years has encouraged Johnston to rethink traditional teaching methods. In order to find new ways to make the harp accessible for everybody, she’s focused on alternative educational techniques like learning by ear and recognizing musical patterns. 

 

Over the past 20 years, Johnston has noticed that the biggest surprise for newcomers to the harp has consistently been how approachable this elegant instrument really is. “A harp is like a piano with no black notes,” she elucidated. “You set the levers according to what key you’re going to play in, so you’re basically never going to play a wrong note… your harp becomes part of you. You lean it back on your chest, and you can feel the vibrations - that’s really what appealed to me from the very beginning.”

 

Looking ahead, Johnston has a simple vision for the future of the HHS. “I just hope everybody keeps playing the harp, and keeps sharing the harp with their friends,” she told The Citizen. That spirit of sharing will be on full display during the school’s anniversary concert, which will be held on July 25 at the Kingsbridge Centre, where over a dozen harps are expected to fill the stage in commemoration of two decades of community music-making.