Baroque violinist Holly Harman & The H Ensemble launch Holly’s debut solo album in the latest gig in the Sounds St Leonards series at St John's Church, Pevensey Road, St Leonards on April 29 (doors 7pm; concert starts 7.30pm).
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this morning
00:06to speak to Holly Hartman in St Leonard's. Now Holly, exciting times. You've got a debut solo
00:13album coming out around. It's coming out at the end of April. You are launching it at St John's
00:21Church, Pevensey Road, St Leonard's on April the 29th. And it sounds like this album means a huge
00:27amount to you because of the circumstances and because of the degree of your involvement in the
00:31technical side of it too. Yeah, that's true. It's my first sort of foray into launching a solo
00:40album. But also I ended up being able to, yes, as you said, get involved in the engineering and
00:50mixing side of putting together a CD. So yeah, it was a real learning curve.
00:57It's been fabulous.
00:58And it sounds like ground has a double meaning insofar as ground was a baroque technique
01:03for performance, referring to the recurring bass line. But this is also you being perhaps
01:08more grounded after having a difficult time in the pandemic and now coming full circle
01:13to doing what you love first.
01:15Yeah, that's definitely true. So yeah, it's sort of got a couple of meanings. Yeah, the ground
01:21bass. And there's a few pieces on the album with ground bass in them, which is, you know,
01:27a really popular compositional technique in the baroque era. And then, yeah, feeling really
01:33grounded in knowing where I want to be and where I want to go and setting myself goals
01:38as a musician and a performer. The pandemic wasn't such a great time for me in terms of my confidence
01:47as a performer, because, you know, we couldn't perform anywhere. So it's just about getting
01:54back to that aspect. And also, yeah, yeah, just feeling grounded in oneself.
02:00Just say a word or two about the music on the album.
02:05So the music on the album, there's just some of my favourite baroque composers, because I
02:12just thought, well, I want to play that music because it's amazing. So music by Heinrich Bieber,
02:18who was a bohemian composer and quite a famous violinist in his day. He wrote some really
02:23virtuosic and very zany sounding pieces. So there's two sonatas on the album. And then
02:32there's some very early Italian violin music by Marco Uccellini. Not much is known about
02:38him, but he composed a couple of sets of sonatas. And they're also very unusual in terms of tonality
02:47and compositional styles, not something we're necessarily used to hearing these days.
02:51And then there's a newly commissioned work by Alice Zavadsky, who's a fantastic singer and
03:01violinist and composer, as well as some folk music, which I also really enjoy playing some
03:0818th century melodies on there, as well as a new tune and some songs by a really good friend
03:18and collaborator, Sid Goldsmith.
03:19It sounds lovely. It sounds brilliant. Congratulations on the album. You are launching it then
03:25on April 29th at St John's Church, Pevensey Road, St Leonard's. Tickets available through
03:33Sound St Leonard's website. Holly, congratulations. Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
03:38Thanks so much, Phil. Nice to speak to you. Cheers.
03:41I'll see you.