Jazz Harp

Until recently, jazz has been an idiom largely neglected by harp players, for several reasons. First, there havent been many players with the technical ability needed to play modern jazz, and until very recently, most people with that ability were interested exclusively in classical styles. In addition, the harp itself is not designed in a way that makes jazz easy to play. Jazz requires a smooth, legato attack, and accents in a jazz line can fall on any part of the beat. Its hard to play the harp legato because of constant breath shifts, and even harder to accent freely. Thats why some very skilled harp players have said that they doubt that its possible to play jazz on the harp. Richard Hunter doesnt agree. He majored in music at Harvard University before working with a variety of jazz and rock bands. He says of Jazz Harp: