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:

Hi all,

I didn’t manage to update my blog while on the road – but now that I’m home I’ll be blogging about my adventures!

Here I am embarking on my fall tour, starting (as tradition dictates) with a series of airport selfies on my way from Victoria, BC to Paris, France:

Victoria

(I’m not a morning person, I think I look the most tired here at the start of my journey :)

Calgary

Halifax

And finally at the train station at Charles de Gaulle airport:

I had a couple of days in Paris to be a tourist (and recover from jetlag):

And of course visit some harp stores! I got to try out a bunch of harps at both Harpes Camac and L’instrumentarium.

One of the highlights of my time in Paris was a reminder of how amazing the internet is at spreading ideas and connections. Takim is a self-taught harpist from Indonesia,
who used my Harp Tuesday videos to help learn the harp. He’s studying chemistry in Paris, saw from my Instagram feed that I was visiting and messaged me. We were able to meet up and he showed me around Paris.

When I’m at home, filming another Harp Tuesday video, it’s easy to forget that people all over the world will be able to watch it and hopefully be positively affected by it – a nice thought!

Up next – Cyprus!