"Harp Camp"

The (quite unpronounceable) Cairde na Cruite An Chúirt Chruitireachta Harp Festival 2010 became known to all of non-native Irish speakers, as, simply, "Harp Camp."

 I had never seen so many harps in one place at one time. 

 Ever. 

 The sound was at once overwhelming and totally magical.

It was like this all week at Harp Camp. Mornings were for our small group lessons. During which we learned music by ear. No sheet music. No music stands. No notes. (Definitely not the way I was trained by Mrs. Jones at the piano for so many years, where I was told, with her hand over mine as she was wont to do, that I had a very good ear but really must turn it off and just read the music, as Bach would have intended. Kathleen Loughnane, with whom I had a private lesson, choked on her tea when I told her this.)

 My class instructor was the amazing Cormac DeBarra.

Excellent teacher, incredible harpist, all-around delight.

He handled "The United Nations," as our class was known (we came from the US, Ireland, Russia, Holland, Denmark, Canada, Egypt and Italy) with skill and the patience of the saints.

 Afternoons were reserved for large group lessons with other instructors.

This is Paul Dooley, teaching us the oldest harp piece ever written down.

I was in heaven.

And in the evenings there were the concerts. The best Irish traditional musicians flocked to Termonfeckin (yes, that's the name of the town where Harp Camp was held...) to perform for us.

There were harps, of course.

And there were also fiddlers, drummers and pipers (Liam O'Flynn).

Music overload. 100% blissful overload. At night, in my little dorm room, I would put in my earplugs and revel in the silence and let the memory of the music put me to sleep.

And the final treat: the instructors provided us with written scores of the tunes we'd been learning all week!