Emotional Landscapes

Coming to the Westhaven Center for the Arts Saturday: harpist/storyteller Patrick Ball. Born and raised in California, Patrick ended up in Ireland doing post-grad history studies. Amidst the academics, he found himself falling for Irish music, and the Celtic harp in particular. “Must be something in the auld DNA. It stirs something in me,” he says. “Also, the legendary brass-strung harp that I play is pretty universally regarded as the most enchanting instrument ever heard.”

Combining music with stories, he created something he calls “Theater of Legend.” “My shows are very similar to solo theater, and most of them are based on Celtic legends. Hence, Theater of Legend,” he explains. “The show I will present on Saturday is Celtic Harp and Story. Whether in the stronghold of a Galway chieftain in the years before history began or yesterday in the snug corner of a pub in Dublin, the Irish have always delighted in storytelling. Their passion for eloquence and wordplay, their deep devotion to their mythical past, their ability to find joy and humor in a dark world, and their belief that the supernatural world could appear between one breath and the next made their stories and the telling of them unrivaled in the world of the oral tradition. And, always, amidst the storytelling, there was music.”

Isn’t that what music’s all about - filling in the spaces between our stories and helping to tell them? It doesn’t matter if it’s lush Celtic harp, raw blues harp, a ripping metal solo or a smoky one-drop bass line, music is there to help us find joy and humor in this dark world and maybe brighten our emotional landscapes, just a little.

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