From South Africa to Barcelona

Where are you orig­i­nally from and where do you live now?

I am orig­i­nally from South Africa and I have live in Eu­rope for the past 14 years, and in Cat­alo­nia al­most 12 years. My par­ents en­cour­aged cul­ture.

What work do you do apart from the EC­Club?

I am a mu­si­cian, I play harp pro­fes­sion­ally and am a teacher of harp and piano. Apart from my fam­ily, I am pas­sions are per­form­ing and teach­ing on my dif­fer­ent harps and ar­rang­ing folk music from around the world for harp. I also enjoy read­ing, cre­ative writ­ing and na­ture.

What kind of books do your mem­bers pre­fer to read?

The books of the ad­vanced group I think are too dif­fi­cult for them. The in­ter­me­di­ate group like their books a lot.

Which books did you like the most last year?

I liked the books by Matthew Quick, Sue Townsend and Donna Leon the most, but I en­joyed all of them.

What's the best thing about being an EC­Club group leader?

Meet­ing new peo­ple and the in­ter­ac­tion we have about the books.

Have you writ­ten any book?

I have writ­ten a short story that was pub­lished in “Writ­ers Abroad” called “Dancer on the Train”. At the mo­ment am busy with a Folk Music book for harp and piano.

What about your music and con­certs?

In May I have three solo harp con­certs in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, for the Rio Harp Fes­ti­val in Rio de Janeiro. I'm happy to have con­certs there. Re­cently I de­vel­oped an in­ter­est in ar­rang­ing tra­di­tional music for the harp. Lat­est in­ter­ests are Celtic, South African, South Amer­ica, Cata­lan and Span­ish music. I had five harps, two Celtic, Aus­trian Folk and two con­cert Harps.

As for con­certs, I like to per­form using one or a com­bi­na­tion of my harps, which in com­bi­na­tion with my di­verse col­lec­tion of music demon­strates all the dif­fer­ent colours of the sounds of the harps. I have arranged more tra­di­tional music from all over the world for harp, given three con­certs, taught, given flute and harp recitals to­gether with Iu­lian Gogu, flautist, and I have a new CD out, which is music rang­ing from Baroque to Blues, called The Magic of the Harp.

How about your Cata­lan?

Oops! Peo­ple told me I should know Castel­lano well first, so that was what I stud­ied first. Maybe in a year or two, I will be ready to start with Cata­lan!

Do you miss South Africa?

Yes, I will al­ways miss it. Ex­cept for my mother, we all live in dif­fer­ent coun­tries now, spread all over the world.