Deborah Henson-Conant
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Deborah Henson-Conant (b. Stockton, California, November 11, 1953) is an American harpist known for her flamboyant stage presence and refusal to fit the stereotype of a harpist as an angelic blond woman in a long dress.
She describes herself on her website as "cross-genre: jazz-pop-comedy-folk-blues-flamenco-celtic", and plays electric harps of various kinds. She performs one-woman shows in theaters, concert halls and festivals. She also performs her original music/theatre shows with symphony orchestras. Her performances mix music with theatrical and story elements. She orchestrates all her own music when she plays with symphony and often engages symphonic musicians in unexpected ways.
The soundtrack of her 2006 DVD release, "Invention & Alchemy" received a Grammy nomination and the video version is scheduled to begin broadcast on Public Television in 2007 (in the USA).
Her performance series "Inviting Invention" (2006) presented a series of "performance explorations" that included both musical and non-musical guests collaborating onstage with Henson-Conant.
Henson-Conant now lives in Arlington, Massachusetts where she recently went on a crusade to save a tree named Belinda (the subject of her song "Belinda") with the Arlington High School chorus, a real tree along the Minuteman Bikeway which was going to be chopped down.
