Baroque violinist Holly Harman launches debut solo album in St Leonards

SussexWorld

Baroque violinist Holly Harman & The H Ensemble launch Holly’s debut solo album in the latest gig in the Sounds St Leonards series at St John's Church, Pevensey Road, St Leonards on April 29 (doors 7pm; concert starts 7.30pm).

Transcript

00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this morning

00:06to speak to Holly Hartman in St Leonard's. Now Holly, exciting times. You've got a debut solo

00:13album coming out around. It's coming out at the end of April. You are launching it at St John's

00:21Church, Pevensey Road, St Leonard's on April the 29th. And it sounds like this album means a huge

00:27amount to you because of the circumstances and because of the degree of your involvement in the

00:31technical side of it too. Yeah, that's true. It's my first sort of foray into launching a solo

00:40album. But also I ended up being able to, yes, as you said, get involved in the engineering and

00:50mixing side of putting together a CD. So yeah, it was a real learning curve.

00:57It's been fabulous.

00:58And it sounds like ground has a double meaning insofar as ground was a baroque technique

01:03for performance, referring to the recurring bass line. But this is also you being perhaps

01:08more grounded after having a difficult time in the pandemic and now coming full circle

01:13to doing what you love first.

01:15Yeah, that's definitely true. So yeah, it's sort of got a couple of meanings. Yeah, the ground

01:21bass. And there's a few pieces on the album with ground bass in them, which is, you know,

01:27a really popular compositional technique in the baroque era. And then, yeah, feeling really

01:33grounded in knowing where I want to be and where I want to go and setting myself goals

01:38as a musician and a performer. The pandemic wasn't such a great time for me in terms of my confidence

01:47as a performer, because, you know, we couldn't perform anywhere. So it's just about getting

01:54back to that aspect. And also, yeah, yeah, just feeling grounded in oneself.

02:00Just say a word or two about the music on the album.

02:05So the music on the album, there's just some of my favourite baroque composers, because I

02:12just thought, well, I want to play that music because it's amazing. So music by Heinrich Bieber,

02:18who was a bohemian composer and quite a famous violinist in his day. He wrote some really

02:23virtuosic and very zany sounding pieces. So there's two sonatas on the album. And then

02:32there's some very early Italian violin music by Marco Uccellini. Not much is known about

02:38him, but he composed a couple of sets of sonatas. And they're also very unusual in terms of tonality

02:47and compositional styles, not something we're necessarily used to hearing these days.

02:51And then there's a newly commissioned work by Alice Zavadsky, who's a fantastic singer and

03:01violinist and composer, as well as some folk music, which I also really enjoy playing some

03:0818th century melodies on there, as well as a new tune and some songs by a really good friend

03:18and collaborator, Sid Goldsmith.

03:19It sounds lovely. It sounds brilliant. Congratulations on the album. You are launching it then

03:25on April 29th at St John's Church, Pevensey Road, St Leonard's. Tickets available through

03:33Sound St Leonard's website. Holly, congratulations. Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.

03:38Thanks so much, Phil. Nice to speak to you. Cheers.

03:41I'll see you.

Category

Transcript

Recommended