Harpa Mystica
Anne Vanschothorst, hailed by Gapplegate Classical Modern Music as "an authoritative, precise and expressive harpist", is a pioneering harp mystic and an award winning multi-media artist exploring creativity in sonic art, film, pronounced lyrics, unspoken tone poems & intuitive composing. The 'harp and soul' sound pendulates between 'minimal' and 'contemporary classical'. She is now in the midst of a surreal collab with Paul Klee, T.S. Eliot, and Nan Shepherd, at the intersection of Spirituality, Modernism & (Artificial) Nature.
"I am a Harpist in a Landscape, seeking Clarity through Mysticism during a continuous sound-search."
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The main focus of Anne's work concerns the expansion of art, the ongoing (harp) sound search in the 21st century. And making global impact through an original sound marking that triggers a butterfly effect in the infinite soundscape we live in. The resonance of the 47strings turns out to be an universal expression of the human longing for the beauty of peace.
​"My perspective on Life is coming from another realm, almost. Poetry is my awareness of the world, my perception ; i live inside Music, a sacred space where i feel at home. The soul search and artistic exploration of a Harpist in a Landscape, with the desire to locate Beauty and the fantastically Weird, go beyond sound and the mystical stringed instrument. Reinventing language, while redefining the harp and rethinking the stage, is inspiring. An intruiging sonorous world with wondrous flora and fauna is created through poetic imagination, a new dialect is spoken, all-embracing. Above all, it leads me to my Muse, the Poet Emily Dickinson : "Find ecstasy in life ; the mere sense of living is joy enough."
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This timeless, poetic, dreamy, inner yet edgy sonic universe is where Anne locates her practice - next to the existing harp planet and music world. She proves that mystical tone poems are divination, emotional and innovative, a music movement in itself ; it indicates that her unique voice is a new chapter in music history.
MEDIA
Anne Vanschothorst is a landscape music composer, minimal harp pioneer, and multimedia artist exploring creativity in applied music, film, and spoken word - using overdub and making sound sculptures with 47strings. Don't miss our conversation with Anne, covering topics such as musical influences, composition, technical aspects of harp playing, and life. READ FULL INTERVIEW​​
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in a room gallery
AUDIO VISUAL CONCEPT | Anne Vanschothorst
PHOTOGRAPHY | Pjotr van Schothorst
television
PRESS QUOTES
“There is a stunning soundtrack quality to Anne Vanschothorst’s music, but that should be no surprise as she has been called upon to provide such to the visual arts.”
– All About Jazz
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“Anne’s magic gives us a weird sonorous world with bizarre fauna and flora through poetic imagination.”
– Klassiek Centraal
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“Many of the miniatures remind me of Erik Satie — not that her music is in his style, but that both composers so thoroughly explore an artfully restricted sonic universe — in which chords and single melodic lines appear in alternation and at a pace slow enough to experience them almost as if they were
sounding sculptures.”
– American Record Guide
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"The sonic landscapes are a structured but
dream-like realm of enchantment, a freely unfolding
exotic sort of classical ambiance of mood and expressivity,
a sort of post-ECM spaciousness."'
– Gapplegate Classical Modern Music Review
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"The author, aware of the importance that women have had
in this process of transmission of the sensitive world, has composed a work of sound art with music and words
of the spirit."
– Núria Serra, Sonograma
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– Jury National Poetryfilm Festival
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10/10
