Harp Festival: Forgotten Roads - A Journey Through Music and Story with Joy Smith
- 1pm - 1.45pm
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About this event:
- Category:
- Classical Music | Harp Festival
- Event type:
- Free | In-person
- Admission:
- Free No tickets required
- Date, time and location:
- , 1pm - 1.45pm in Lecture Recital Room
Event information
Forgotten Roads - A Journey Through Music and Story with Joy Smith
Come and listen to musical treasures of the past, brought to life on historical harps.
Guildhall Professor of Historical Harps, Joy Smith, takes on the role of a modern-day troubadour, combining performance and storytelling to reveal the worlds behind the music. Each piece is rooted in its time – songs of love, loss, devotion, and defiance – once heard in courts, chapels, and beyond. From haunting laments to lively dances, Forgotten Roads traces the paths these melodies have travelled, and returns them to the present.
'So improvisatory and spontaneous. Very very exciting.’ Sean Rafferty - BBC Radio 3
Free, no tickets required
Joy Smith
Born in Cornwall, Joy first met a harp when she was 6 yrs old. When, at the age of 8, she inherited that very same instrument, it felt as if the harp had chosen her rather than the other way round. That very first chance meeting led her to travel the world with seven different harps and become an explorer of music and sound of all kinds. She is renowned for her thorough and exciting approach, creating programmes and performing music in the style and on the instruments they were intended for, from medieval to 21st century.
Her eclectic taste in music has led her to play in an unusual array of venues from the Royal Albert Hall to the Glastonbury Festival and with groups such as I Fagiolini, The Gabrieli Consort, The Sixteen, the Rednote Ensemble and the New London Consort; the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, The OAE, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Opera North; the Radio Science Orchestra, David Gray, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Paul Hartnoll and The Joy Formidable. She has performed as a soloist at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Teatro Real Madrid and Glyndebourne Opera. Joy is a storyteller, composer and percussionist. She enjoys learning the historically-informed rules and then deciding when to break them.
Venue information
Silk Street Theatre, Music Hall and Lecture Recital Room are located in the main Guildhall School building on Silk Street and for Barbican produced events the venue can also be accessed from the Barbican if you exit via the doors next to Barbican Kitchen on Level G.
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Silk Street
Barbican
EC2Y 8DT
