Heaven Fan
The renewal process has helped me to look at music in a different light and direction. The entire time spent on researching and performing these compositions definitely guided me to reflect on my own musical upbringing: the East and the West, my past and my present.
Heaven spent the last 18 months studying the interrelationship of Eastern and Western music. The focal points for her research were composers Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Franz Liszt from the Western world, and Israeli composer Ami Maayani from the Eastern world as well as Chinese folk music and 20th century works inspired by Japanese Haiku poems.
She worked intensively with guest artists from China at the MasterWorks Festival, a month-long training program for classical artists held annually at Grace College in Winona Lake, IN. During the process, she transcribed nineteen songs of Chinese folk music for the solo harp. She also performed a lecture recital on the subject at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and traveled to Boston to share her research as part of the Boston Harp Festival. Looking ahead, Heaven also accepted an invitation to present her research in Saint Louis in April 2013.
Harp faculty, Anderson University, Anderson, IN
Recipient, National Anne Adams Award, American Harp Society
First harp scholar to publish an in-depth analysis on the New Method for the Harp by early nineteenth-century English harp virtuoso Elias Parish Alvars
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