Harpist Carpenter’s travels reflected in her music
When Devon Carpenter first signed up for harp lessons, it was something of an impulsive move.
“I started when I was 15,” Carpenter said. “I was attending music camp, going for choir — I was a singer. They requested everyone take a second instrument. I picked harp. It was the first time I saw a harp in person. Then I got to tell my dad I needed a harp.”
Weekly trips from Jacksonville to Champaign for harp lessons also followed.
The harp since has taken Carpenter around the world, to countries that don’t even have harps, and back home to west-central Illinois.
“I’ve lived all around the world and ended up buying a house on the same street where I grew up,” she said. “My parents are still there.”
Carpenter will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday at Jacksonville Public Library as part of the library’s free Music Under the Dome series.
Her performance will encompass various elements of her musical journey, she said. That includes “a little bit of classical, but also folk songs from around the world and some musical theater music, as well.
“I will spend some time introducing people to the harp, explaining some things we can do that are unique to the instrument. There are different sound effects, different ways you can play the instrument to create unique sounds beyond what you would expect.”
Like that go-to concept of harp music as the background for a dream sequence.
“That’s my favorite thing to do,” Carpenter said, “to kind of break the (harp music) stereotype of the angel in the cloud.”
Carpenter owns The Music Factory in Springfield. The studio offers Musikgarten music and movement class for children through age 10, along with music lessons for older children and adults. She spends three days a week teaching there and her weekends traveling for various performances, from providing wedding music to, well, whatever her clients can dream up.
“In 2013, I was contacted by a company out of India and asked if I wanted to come to India and play harp in a bubble,” Carpenter said. “Sure. So I did.”
She spent 2013 and 2014 living in Mumbai and working throughout India, where she learned how to play Bollywood hits on the harp and, yes, sometimes performed in a giant bubble.
Carpenter then spent 2015 and 2016 in Nigeria, where she frequently performed for events of the Irish Consulate and the Irish Embassy.
While classically trained, Carpenter “sort of branched out” into “pop, jazz and ethnic music from around the world,” she said.
“Someone asks, ‘Can you play … ?’ and my answer is always ‘yes’,” she said. “Then I figure it out later. … My two favorite things are playing the harp and traveling. With what I do, I get to combine those two.”
She performed in Mexico, Cambodia and the Bahamas in 2022 and has the British Virgin Islands on her calendar for this spring, she said.
“Most places most harpists won’t go, I will go,” Carpenter said.
She’s learned how to travel with her harp and has been fortunate enough never to have lost one in transit, though she takes precautions.
“When I went to Cambodia, there were literally no harps in the country,” she said.
Simply knowing her harp could get lost, Carpenter found one she could rent in Vietnam and then arrived in Cambodia early. Her harp wasn’t lost then, either. But, had it been, she had allowed herself enough time to drive to Vietnam, pick up the rental harp and drive back before her performance.
Carpenter’s travels have influenced her playing and what Sunday’s audience is likely to hear, she said.
“When I moved to India, they wanted me to learn how to play Bollywood music, because that’s what most people wanted,” she said.
She also added a few Arabic songs, some Lebanese tunes and some music from Egypt.
“When someone asks me to learn something … I figure out a little bit more and a little bit more” than they asked for, she said.
