Parker Ramsay, harp

Catch this rising star in his captivating program of twentieth-century music of Caplet, Britten, Hindemith, and a new work by Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman.

Parker Ramsay has forged a career defying easy categorization. Equally at home on modern and period harps, he pursues his passions in tackling new and underperformed works and bringing his instrument to new audiences. Recent and upcoming performances include solo performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Phillips Collection, Cal Performances, Shriver Hall, IRCAM, King’s College, Cambridge, the Spoleto Festival USA and the Center for the Art of Performing at UCLA.

His recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations was praised as “remarkably special” (Gramophone), “nuanced and insightful” (BBC Music Magazine), “relentlessly beautiful” (WQXR), and “marked by a keen musical intelligence” (Wall Street Journal). His last album, released in October 2022, features The Street, a new concert-length work for solo harp and text by Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman. In 2024, he will tour The Street with Mark Morris Dance Company.

He has also collaborated with composers such as Marcos Balter, Saad Haddad, Josh Levine, Jared Miller and Sarah Kirkland Snider. Alongside gambist Arnie Tanimoto, Parker is co-director of A Golden Wire, a period instrument ensemble based in New York. As an organist, he has performed at Washington National Cathedral, Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center, St Thomas Church, 5^th Avenue and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He has presented talks, performances and lectures on period instruments at the Smithsonian Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has been published in VAN Magazine, Early Music America Magazine, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Raised in Tennessee, Parker began harp studies with his mother, Carol McClure. He served as organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge before pursuing graduate studies at Oberlin at Juilliard. In 2014, he was awarded First Prize at the Sweelinck International Organ Competition. He lives in Paris.

Program:
Divertissement à la française | André Caplet 
Sonate für Harfe | Paul Hindemith
Suite for Harp, Op. 83 | Benjamin Britten
Rhapsodie | Marcel Grandjany 
The Street (Fourteen Meditations on the Stations of the Cross) | Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman

Concert Sponsor: Julie Aronson Dehnel