Day 82 -- John Doherty's Mazurka on a Triplett Zephyr Lap Harp

This daily series is intended to demonstrate some of the most well-known Irish traditional session tunes played on a wide variety of sizes and styles of folk harp. To listen to a playlist of the series, please click here:    • Irish Dance Tunes   This tune is #82 in the "Foinn Seisiún" recordings, produced by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, an organization dedicated the preservation and promotion of Irish traditional music. The tunes in this series are chosen because they are among the most common tunes played at sessions throughout the world. If you’d like to play Irish dance music with others, learning these tunes is a great place to start. From many years, I have used this recording series to help teach my harp students how to play improvised accompaniment at sessions, as well as how to play melody. I’ve noticed, though, that while most of the tunes can be found on Youtube played by traditional lead instruments like fiddle or accordion, relatively few of them are available to view on harp. So I’ve so out to rectify that by releasing a tune a day from this series for the foreseeable future. Wish me luck! These arrangements are mostly improvised — I basically learn to “frame” of the tune and fill it in with improvised chords and ornamentation. They’re a bit raw, and that’s just fine -- the intention here is to replicate what might happen spontaneously at a session. I learned them by ear, but if you’d like to learn these from music, you can find them all at the session.org. Comhaltas also sells books of the tunes at their website. The harp that I'm playing is a new Triplett Zephyr that's currently for sale.. You may notice that I’m playing a different harp on each tune. I’m using this series to spotlight harps that I currently have available for sale or rent, as well as some of my favorite personal instruments. If one of the harps in this series catches your eye AND you happen to be in the Pacific Northwest, USA (sorry, no shipping at this time), feel free to go to www.folkharpsanctuary.com to learn more. If you’re interested in studying with me, you can also check out my performance site, which is www.elizabethnicholson.com. #foinnseisiuntunes, #Irishdancetunes, #irishharp, #sessiontunes