Harpists assemble for 73 piece ensemble

Megan Lin, Staff Reporter

The district’s harpists will play in concert together at 7:00 p.m. on Friday in the auditorium as part of an annual event for the rapidly growing harp program.

“Frisco ISD opened up the harp program nine years ago,” harp director Yumiko Schlaffer said. “This is our ninth annual recital and we grew so much in the past nine years; we have about 75 students under the district and I don’t think there is another American school district that has this huge of a harp program. I think we’re growing and getting like number one in the whole state.”

Junior Melina Kehtar has seen the program expand firsthand.

“It feels rewarding [to be a part of the program], not just for me, but for Mrs. Yumiko as well,” Kehtar said. “Since the program had recently started when I joined in 6th grade, I got to be one of the first few students to set the foundation for the program and now to see it grow to 70 plus people in the whole district with five teachers is pretty amazing.”

The recital consists of multiple groups performing, with groups from both middle school and high school.

“We’re going to showcase all the harp students; 73 harp students will attend, and then we’re going to have 37 harps on the stage,” Schlaffer said. “It’s a huge concert but of course, 73 students cannot play at the same time, so we’re going to have each different group: 6th grader group, 7th grader group, and then we have two different high school groups. And so we’re going to have the ensemble concert. It’s almost like an orchestra concert, but it’s all harps.”

To pull off the concert, the harp students devoted time to preparing both in and outside of class.

“We put a good amount of work into the preparation,” Kehtar said. “We had one rehearsal and we’re going to have another. It’s really difficult to get 10 plus harps to play in sync with each other when we’re so used to just one or two, but I think we’re going to sound great.”

The middle school students put in a lot of effort as well.

“My harp teacher listened to the pieces everyday, and I also commit to practicing daily,” Fowler Middle School eighth grader Marian Ma said. “The FISD also held a group rehearsal with all the harpists together to practice ensemble pieces.”

Having a range of students also means having a variety of teaching curriculum.

“For the middle school students’ ensembles, they’re just learning how to play with people as an ensemble,” Schlaffer said. “So it’s more like technical counting, and how to take a bow on the stage, or how to behave on stage kind of thing. But for high school ensembles, they already went through that and then they are more eager to learn about music itself; how to sing with the melody, how to play together, how to really make music together, and unite as an ensemble.”

Regardless, Schlaffer believes the recital will go well.

“As always, this is one of our biggest events of the year, and I always have a great feeling after the recital so I’m sure that this one is going to be excellent and also we have the most number of students attending this recital so it’s going to be huge and just gorgeous,” Schlaffer said. “I know it’s going to be well received.”