“I’m trying to think outside the box,” says South Lake Tahoe harpist Anne Roos. “My one mission is to prove that the harp is not boring.”
The sprightly Roos grew up in Los Angeles attending North Hollywood High School and University of California, Los Angeles. While wandering through a winter solstice festival at Cal State Northridge as a young woman, she encountered the ancient, reverent tones of celebrated harpist Sylvia Woods. Roos worked as a television ratings analyst at the time. The harp was the perfect reprieve from toil, tube and stress.
“Most people who aren’t familiar with the harp think it must only play classical music. They don’t know it’s so adaptable. It serves the function of really telling people the Celtic harp is not limited.”
–Anne Roos
“I needed something else to do,” she says. “My father used to take me to the Hollywood Bowl to listen to the L.A. Philharmonic play Bach and Beethoven every summer. I have very fond memories of that.”
Watch Anne Roos play “Stairway to Heaven”
Yet unlike the imposing, classical concert harp most people know, the Celtic harp (or folk harp) is made of wood, lacks pedals, has only 38 strings and tops out at around 5 feet tall.
“I like the tone better,” says Roos “It’s easier to haul around and I can bring it to the beach without getting sand in the pedals. It’s sort of like the difference between an automatic and a stick shift. Can I go up three flights of stairs with my harp? It’s not easy, but yes.”
Shortly after she and her husband departed L.A. for the Sierra Nevada, Roos left her public-school teaching career to pursue harp full time. Twenty years ago, there were enough quickie wedding chapels in South Lake Tahoe to keep her busy from the start.
“I decided I was going to make it work,” she says. “It wasn’t a realization; it was a determination.”
Before 2020, Roos typically played around 100 weddings a year alongside proposals, elopements, wine tastings, cruises, Celtic festivals, educational assemblies, workshops, perfume shops and casino lobbies.
“I really want to prove the harp can go anywhere,” she says. “It can be a hot-air balloon for all I care.”
Now, in the age of COVID, she’s focused primarily on live streams and private lessons. Her student roster has nearly tripled since the pandemic hit.
“My opinion about learning an instrument is you gravitate toward something you know you’re going to get over,” she says. “The harp is no different. It looks big and complicated and hard to haul around, but it’s really not.”
Roos has opened a Patreon channel where members can see her perform three to four live streams a month. For drop-ins, the cost of a concert is $9.
“It’s kind of an experimental thing for me because I’m used to playing with people in front of me and you have to trust they are there on the other side of the camera,” she says. “It’s definitely keeping up my chops.”
Roos has released nine albums of harp music since 2004 including interpretations of Olde English and Celtic traditionals, sailing songs, jazz standards and pop classics. Her 2017 compilation “Blue Jeans and Velvet” includes covers of “Stairway to Heaven,” “Free Bird” and “Desperado.” She delivers beautifully on everything from Mancini to Metallica, Gershwin to The Rolling Stones.
“I like being a chameleon in music,” says Roos. “I play the Celtic harp, but what do you want me to play? Most people who aren’t familiar with the harp think it must only play classical music. They don’t know it’s so adaptable. It serves the function of really telling people the Celtic harp is not limited.”
In 2015, Roos won a Grammy for her performance on New Age Album of the Year “Winds of Samsara” with Indian composer Ricky Kej and South African flautist Wouter Kellerman.
“That was kind of amazing,” she says. “It’s part of the wonder of the Internet. You can work with people across the world. It was an absolutely fantastic experience. It’s opened doors and I’m still in touch with many people.”
Listening to Roos play the songs we all know and love on three dozen strings swiftly elucidates the harp’s distinctive power: it’s knack for drawing out the absolute purest quality of any composition.
“Harp is really mysterious,” says Roos. “It certainly doesn’t sound like anything else. The tonality is what if offers. It’s a healing instrument.”
“It’s one of the few instruments that you actually hold against your body,” says Roos. “You can feel the vibrations, so it does have an unusual, magical quality.” | harpistanneroos.com
Oct. 1 | 11 p.m.
Oct. 9 | 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 17 | 8 p.m.
Oct. 25 | 4 p.m.
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