Here is a piece on our Regional Secretary for Australasia
Dr Lizzie Carrothers-Monument PhD, FSA Scot.
As well as being our Regional Secretary, Liz is a published novelist and also works as a script doctor and writing coach. She Lives in Gellong. Victoria, Australia working with such international clients as HarperCollins and Jericho Writers as well as other literary agencies to assist and accelerate the submission process for writers of talant. On top of this we now find Liz is an accomplished musician.
Liz is a harpist and by her own volition is lucky enough to play a harp made by the renowned Scottish company, ‘Starfish’ who manufacture instruments in Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands. The ‘Lochaber’ is also a named handmade concert gauge harp which has the same tension and spacing as a pedal harp but with all the responsiveness and clarity of sound that customers expect from a this level of instrument. Her music of choice is Scottish jigs, reels, strathspeysand the occasional polka, but also a little jazz and popular music renditions. What a skill set!
Any competant musician, always strives for the best tool in order to gain the best response to your playing, as such a Lochaber Harp had been Liz’s dream for many years. It wasn’t until she moved half way around the world that she decided to order one. However she had to wait (excitedly) for a year for it to be made.
With the harp on site, Lizzie reached out to other members of the harp community, and was delighted to discover plenty of Australian-born Starfish fans in the town she lives in: Geelong – what a small world! Today, she plays with a duo and a trio, alongside other harps made in the Scottish Highlands.
Here is the trio to include Liz, Natalie and Andrea, and she also plays in a duo with Melinda, a guitarist and vocalist.
Starfish Harps
The starting point of any good string instrument is in its wood, so it has to be the right wood. I like all great instrument makers, they use sustainably sourced hardwood comes from specialist suppliers, and work is carried out to ensure the wood’s natural features are used symathetically to produce instruments that look and sound wonderful.
Starfish harps are made entirely by hand, from their own designs, combining traditional joinery skills and techniques from the Scottish boat-building industry. As such they are designed to work with a set of specified strings allowing the harpist to achieve the optimum balance of stability, practicality and playing comfort as can be heard from the sample above.
Lochaber
The Lochaber area in Scotland is a large rural part of the Scottish west Highlands. which welcomes vistors and travellers to the Highlands on the A82 by Rannoch Moor coming up from the south. The area stretches all the way to the sea coastline including Ardnamurchan and Mallaig in the west, and encompasses the historical area of Glen Spean in the north-east and of course the Great Glen in the north – on the way to Loch Ness.
Lochaber’s “capital” is the Highland town of Fort William, which sits at the head of Loch Linnhe and at the foot of Ben Nevis. Ben Nevis in Gaelic is ‘Beinn Nibheis‘, ‘Beinn’, meaning mountain and ‘Nibheis’ meaning malicious or venemous? It is highest and most popular mountain in the United Kingdom.
