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                    <td><p align="center"><span class="h1">Deborah Henson-Conant 
                        - Press Biography</span><br>
                        <span class="p">Contact: Michael Belcher- Tel: (781) 483-3556 
                        - Fax: (781) 483-3987 <br>
                        Email: <a href="mailto:publicity@hipharp.com">publicity@hipharp.com</a></span></p>
                      <p align="center"><font size="5"><strong><font color="#000000" size="4" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><img src="/dhc/imgs/pressbio_pg/dhc_bp1_2_23ed_5x7_72.jpg" width="360" hspace="12" vspace="10" align="left"></b></font></strong></font></p>
                      <p><span class="h5">Music&#8230;Theatre&#8230;Comedy&#8230;Passion.</span> 
                        To describe Deborah Henson-Conant is nearly impossible. 
                        She&#8217;s a cross-genre, Blues-Flamenco-Celtic-Funk-Folk-Jazz 
                        dynamo. She tells tall tales with the ease of a stand-up 
                        comic. She solos and wails like a rock guitarist. She 
                        turns music into theater and theater into something lyrical. 
                        See her once and you&#8217;ll never look at the harp the 
                        same way again.</p>
                      <p><span class="h5">She performs in symphony halls as a 
                        soloist with major orchestras, and she plays intimate 
                        shows in clubs, festivals and theaters internationally</span>. 
                        She has toured with the Boston Pops, opened for Ray Charles 
                        at Tanglewood, jammed onstage with Bobbie McFerrin and 
                        offstage with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, and starred in 
                        the PBS special &quot;Celtic Harpestry.&#8221; She's been 
                        featured on shows from CBS&#8217; &#8220;Sunday Morning&#8221; 
                        and NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Today Show&#8221; to NPR&#8217;s 
                        &#8220;Weekend Edition&#8221; and the Food Network&#8217;s 
                        &#8220;Warped,&#8221; and interviewed by hosts and journalists 
                        from Scott Simon, Susan Stamberg and Studs Terkel to Charlie 
                        Rose and Joan Rivers.</p>
                      <p><span class="h5">Her DVD &amp; CD project with the Grand 
                        Rapids Symphony, &quot;Invention and Alchemy,&quot; received 
                        a Grammy Nomination and is appearing on PBS stations nationwide.</span> 
                        The project features her one-woman show with 80-piece 
                        orchestra. The DVD is a full-length concert program with 
                        over 45 minutes of behind-the-scenes features; a multi-camera, 
                        surround-sound disc, shot in hi-definition. It has an 
                        Emmy-winning director, Grammy-winning sound engineers 
                        and a program of symphonic music theater that brings Deborah&#8217;s 
                        show closer than the front row.</p>
                      <p><span class="h5">Deborah's audiences are as diverse as 
                        her music -</span> musicians who want to see what it takes 
                        to create a unique musical style and fans of all ages 
                        who want to be both moved and entertained. The front rows 
                        of her concerts are often filled with families, brought 
                        by parents who want their children to see firsthand what 
                        it means to passionately follow your own creative path.</p>
                      <p class="h5">Deborah Henson-Conant: a prolific composer, 
                        a revolutionary player and a performer of irrepressible 
                        spirit.</p>
                      <p><span class="h5">PHOTO</span>: Brion Price -- Hi-Res 
                        version available from our Publicity page (see menu above)</p>
                      <p align="center">&nbsp;</p>
                      <p class="p"><span class="h2">WHO IS DEBORAH HENSON-CONANT 
                        and <br>
                        WHAT'S SHE DOING TO THAT HARP!? </span><br>
                        (A Short Biography)<br>
                        <br>
                        Deborah Henson-Conant is a Grammy-Nominated artist who 
                        sings and plays the harp, tells stories and composes symphonic 
                        music that runs the gamut from bombastic to tender. She 
                        has been described as &#8220;the wild woman of the harp&#8221; 
                        by bandleader Doc Severinsen and &#8220;the talented love-child 
                        of Andr&eacute; Previn and Lucille Ball&#8221; by NPR's 
                        Scott Simon. Her playing ranges from raucous to delicate 
                        and her performances blur the line between musical performance 
                        and theatrical event. <br>
                        <br>
                        Deborah herself is impossible to categorize. She has made 
                        her own path, composing musical theater since the age 
                        of 12, first studying classical harp, then developing 
                        her own version of swing and Latin jazz and finally synthesizing 
                        all three elements into a new genre of musical performance. 
                        Her shows mix jazz, folk and flamenco with a theatrical 
                        narrative of storytelling and humor. <br>
                        <br>
                        As a child, Deborah was passionate about music, but disdainful 
                        of lessons, and spent her time composing. Her parents 
                        tried every instrument they could think of to lead her 
                        to serious study, with mounting frustrations from both 
                        sides. When a rented harp showed up in the living room 
                        just as Deborah hit puberty, she grudgingly took a half-dozen 
                        lessons, then wailed, &#8220;This is a sissy instrument! 
                        And no-one will hold hands with me if I have calluses 
                        on my fingers!&#8221;<br>
                        <br>
                        For the next ten years, Deborah didn&#8217;t touch a harp. 
                        Then suddenly her college band needed a harpist and those 
                        six lessons made her the resident expert. She studied 
                        music by day and played popular harp music in posh dining 
                        rooms by night. Then one night she&#8217;d had enough 
                        of both classical music and background performances. She 
                        dragged her six-foot gilded harp from a Boston hotel restaurant 
                        into an adjacent jazz club and said to the bandleader, 
                        &#8220;Can I sit in?&#8221; She started jamming on the 
                        blues and has never looked back. She&#8217;s now made 
                        more than a dozen recordings from jazz to children&#8217;s 
                        music and has become synonymous with her website: &#8220;HipHarp.com.&#8221;<br>
                        <br>
                        Deborah Henson-Conant has toured with the Boston Pops 
                        as a guest soloist, premiered her own orchestral works 
                        with symphonies throughout the US, toured jazz clubs in 
                        Germany and Celtic Festivals in France, opened for Ray 
                        Charles at Tanglewood, starred in the PBS special Celtic 
                        Harpestry; been featured on NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR and has 
                        hosted TV shows for BET and BBC Affiliates. She&#8217;s 
                        been interviewed by Charlie Rose, Joan Rivers, Billy Taylor, 
                        Studs Terkel, Scott Simon, Jamie Gangel, and Susan Stamberg. 
                        She's the Grammy-Nominated artist and star of &quot;Invention 
                        &amp; Alchemy,&quot; her one-woman show with full orchestra, 
                        which debuted on PBS stations nationwide in March 2007. 
                      </p>
                      <p class="p">Henson-Conant has revolutionized her instrument. 
                        She's brought vibrant passion and individuality to its 
                        sound -- and in the process she herself has been transformed. 
                        Her work is an exploration of possibilities -- a transformation 
                        that moves her audience out of the ordinary and into the 
                        extraordinary. If you&#8217;re one of those people who 
                        thinks a harp is meant to soothe the savage beast, think 
                        again - this time it&#8217;s the savage beast who&#8217;s 
                        PLAYING the darned thing!<br>
                        <br>
                        <span class="h2">WHY THE HARP?</span> Deborah never wanted 
                        to play the harp (she called it a &#8220;sissy&#8221; 
                        instrument when she first saw it), yet her own struggle 
                        with it is, in part, what has created her persona. <br>
                        <br>
                        Already a composer by preference, the lack of music written 
                        for the harp forced her to become a prolific composer 
                        (she now composes nearly all the music she performs), 
                        writing both solo harp music and symphonic music featuring 
                        her harp and voice.<br>
                        <br>
                        When she found herself chafing under the confines of the 
                        classical music world, she developed her own style of 
                        swing and Latin jazz by emulating jazz pianists, guitarists 
                        and horn players. She explored her instrument&#8217;s 
                        fascinating roots in other cultures, from Mexico to the 
                        Celtic Isles. She then incorporated these elements into 
                        her own compositions, landed a record contract with the 
                        pre-eminent contemporary jazz label at the time (GRP) 
                        and became known as the world&#8217;s premiere jazz harpist. 
                        <br>
                        <br>
                        When jazz itself began to confine her, she expanded to 
                        incorporate flamenco, blues and folk, and when the harp 
                        constrained her physically, she had a new instrument built 
                        for her, a solid-body electric &#8220;Body Harp&#8221; 
                        that combines the portability and volume of an electric 
                        guitar with the technique of a harp (more about the &#8220;Body 
                        Harp&#8221; below). <br>
                        <br>
                        When symphonies asked her to perform as a soloist, and 
                        she had no &#8220;orchestra charts,&#8221; she began to 
                        orchestrate her own works and has now created a body of 
                        music for solo harp virtuoso and orchestra. <br>
                        <br>
                        In short, the very &#8220;limitations&#8221; of her instrument 
                        have led to the richness of her performances and have 
                        helped her create a genre that is hers alone.</p>
                      <p class="p"><span class="h2"><br>
                        DEBORAH'S SIGNATURE INSTRUMENT:</span> In 1998 she convinced 
                        French harp builder Joel Garnier to create an instrument 
                        for her that she could strap on her body. This electric 
                        blue harp-with-the-soul-of-an-electric-guitar is now her 
                        signature instrument. With each string individually electrified, 
                        the &#8220;Body Harp&#8221; allows her to soar over the 
                        brass section of an orchestra, or play exquisitely delicate 
                        solo passages.</p>
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