Josh Layne’s Harp Blog

Time to finally continue my blog about my fall 2018 tour :)

After Paris, I flew to Cyprus:

This was my first time there – such a different landscape than the Pacific Northwest. I had a few days to explore the island – ended up renting a car and got to drive on the “wrong” side of the road – exciting and stressful, hah. Visited the Baths of Aphrodite and The Tomb of the Kings, among other sites:

One of my most vivid memories of Cyprus is the heat – it was around 34C most days. I was told I was lucky I wasn’t there in August, which had been unbearably hot this year. Still, to me, at least, this felt pretty hot!

(Indiana Jones, eat your heart out :) )

From there to Nicosia, the capital of Greek Cyprus where I was to do a concert and a workshop. Maria Yerosimou is a Cypriot harpist who set up everything.

There aren’t a lot of harps on Cyprus – Maria always wanted to learn but had to go to Greece and the UK in order to study harp. After living in London for a number of years she’s back on Cyprus and doing a lot to create opportunities for people to learn the harp and grow a harp community. She, her husband and family were wonderful hosts, including showing me more of the island:

Had a fascinating experience of attending a classical Greek tragedy – performed of course in the original Greek. An actress friend of Maria’s had invited us and I thought it sounded like an interesting thing to try. I decided to go in not reading anything about the plot… In the end, while I might not have known exactly what was going on, the acting was top-notch and I could easily understand what was being emoted. Periodically sections would be sung instead of spoken – reminding me of listening to opera without understanding the words.

The setting was wonderful as well – an ancient outdoor courtyard turned into a theatre space. All-in-all a rather magical experience.

Finally, my concert on October 2nd. A well attended and enthusiastic audience at ARTE music academy made for a good start to my tour!

From there, on to Sofia, Bulgaria! Look for that in my next blog post – I’ll leave you with a few more photos: