Join Hailsham harpist Fiona for free Facebook concerts

Fiona Hosford LSRM BA (Hons), who plays a variety of styles including classical, pop and jazz, started the live-streamed recitals on March 22.

“At the moment, it’s very simple and it’s not very techy,” says Fiona. “I’m running a live feed of an hour’s harp recital or concert, which is interactive.”

All music lovers need to do is head to Fiona’s Facebook page, at 8pm, select ‘videos’ and get comfortable.

“People can just listen. Some people have it on the in background and some people want to interact and go ‘oh, I don’t suppose you’ve got this piece by John Legend...’

“I just run it through my mobile,” explains Fiona. “I intend to start off each recital very calming, just some gentle music. Everyone can grab a cup of tea, sit down, relax, listen and if they want to interact they can. Some people don’t and it’s absolutely fine. Then I just have a bit of a chat about how the harp works and then half way through my cat usually whinges to go out or have food.”

Originally from Burgess Hill, Fiona had private harp lessons until she was about 15 and then went to art college. She achieved Grade 8 while still a teenager and then did an art degree for four years at Brunel in London while finding her own gigs. After that she lived abroad in Cyprus on a cruise ship and then came back to play in London. Fiona has also studied the piano, violin and singing but she says that the harp “took over” about 20 years ago.

Under normal circumstances, she would be very busy playing weddings, corporate gigs and a variety of social events, but the outbreak of COVID-19 has made this impossible.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Fiona says. “I mean you’ve got NHS workers, you’ve got other key workers, you’ve got the postman still going, you’ve got lots of people doing very vital jobs and I can’t do anything really.”

So Fiona sees these online performances as her contribution.

“Initially this was just something I thought would push me out of my comfort zone,” she explains. “Now, actually I view it as a two-way street. It’s musical distraction for my audience and it’s musical distraction for me.”

“When I do recitals it’s me choosing the music and people listen and they clap and they go away again. This is a bit different in that I can see the running thread of comments as I’m playing. People will send a little laughing face if my cat’s been whingeing. Or they’ll say ‘oh that’s good, what piece of music is that from?’ I’ll just ad-lib it and find that one thing usually leads onto the other. Then at about 9pm I’ll just say ‘right, sending you all air hugs, enjoy your cup of tea’ and, hopefully, people like myself will go to bed, instead of worrying, worrying, worrying.”

People can make a donation to Fiona via her website if they wish but Fiona says that these shows are not about money.

“I reluctantly put the donate button on there because that’s not why I was doing it,” Fiona laughs. “But I’d had about three or four emails come in about four days into doing this with people saying ‘look we want to send you some money’.”

So Fiona reckoned that PayPal was the easiest system to use and that any payments could go towards harp repairs, strings and helping her get through the UK’s current rough patch.

“If people are asking for requests and I don’t have the sheet music then I have to buy the sheet music online, so the donations on PayPal can also help towards that.”

“I expected people to put to put a quid in if they wanted,” Fiona reveals. “But I had one ex-client put £150 in! It was a bit ‘wow’ and, in fact, it even reduced me to tears.”

In return Fiona offered to perform a special 30-minute concert for the client’s grandson via Skype.

But everyone is welcome to watch the Facebook streams for free.

“I’ve got professional videos of my work on YouTube, but I don’t really want to put these streams on there because they’re very relaxed,” Fiona laughs. “To the point where I’m actually thinking of having a pyjama party with the harp in a couple of week’s time. Everyone can sit there in their pyjamas and I’ll wear my dressing gown. It’s just something a bit different. I’m not trying to dumb down what I do or what other musicians do at all. It’s just trying to give something that people can relate to and understand.”

And not everyone knows much about classical music or the harp, so Fiona hopes that the streams may spark an interest in her viewers.

Now that’s she’s established, racking up hundreds of views per video, Fiona reckons she’ll scale her performing schedule back to about four shows a week.

“I’m leaving it quite open because if we’re locked down until June then everyone’s going to expect it every night until June.”

She also provides online lessons to pupils at St Andrew’s Prep School in Eastbourne and Bede’s Senior School in Upper Dicker, so she has to dedicate time to creating lesson plans. But, Fiona says, she’ll let people know on the Facebook page in the morning if she needs the evening off.

“There’s enough of those videos on there now where people can go back and listen to anything I’ve played before,” says Fiona.

So what kind of music does Fiona like to play the most?

“There’s a couple of harp pieces I really love,” she says. “I do like playing Spanish music and I do like playing jazz, I did some last night. You’ve got things like Bach, you’ve got Einaudi, you’ve got Debussy. It’s pretty varied. I’ve got an iPad Pro at home and I started scanning all my sheet music into it about a year and a half back and that process took about three months because I had so much to scan into it. But, of course, with these evenings going on, with people saying ‘can you play John Legend, can you play Elton John, can you play this?’ I can just search through the iPad and find it. It’s absolutely ideal, instead of chucking bits of sheet music all around my front room.”

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