A chairde, 

The Historical Harp Society of Ireland wishes you and your loved ones our very best wishes for 2014. Our heartfelt thanks to all those of you who have helped and supported us in any way in 2013: we couldn't work to revive the building, studying and playing of Ireland's ancient harp without you. Our generous funding bodies, patrons, supporters, associate members and scholar members are listed here: http://www.irishharp.org/patrons.htm

FUNDRAISING

In order to achieve our goals for the next twelve months, we are busy fundraising. In addition to finding more grant aid, we would like to increase our membership at home and abroad. We're taking this opportunity to ask friends, current and past members, to join us in 2014.  By being a member, you will play a tangible part in the HHSI's work: helping to revive the ancient and illustrious instrument depicted in Ireland's national emblem, and helping to give back to the world a thousand years of Gaelic harp music, which might otherwise remain silent. 

MEMBERSHIP

Your membership fees help to fund the HHSI's concerts, lectures, online events, beginners' taster workshops, our groundbreaking library, and allow us to invest in researching and building replicas of historic Irish harps. Here's a reminder of our activities:

*Year round nationwide tuition for adults and children

*Talks, workshops and beginners' Taster Days

*The first ever Student Harp Bank of early Irish harps to rent to children and adults

*The first ever lending and reference library relating to early Irish harp and related culture and history

*The HHSI national Summer Concert Series presenting the best of Irish and international instrumentalists and singers working in the field of early Irish music

*The world's foremost summer school for the instrument: Scoil na gCláírseach—Summer School of Early Irish Harp

*An online shop for harps and CDs

Members receive updates on activities, and—in Ireland—have access to the HHSI library and can rent HHSI Student harps, if they are taking tuition with us. Membership fees are also deductible from any HHSI workshop / summer school fees payable in the year of membership.

Associate Membership costs €30 annually and runs from January to December each year. If you feel particularly enthusiastic about our work, you might even consider being a Supporter or Patron! All members are listed on the HHSI website, unless they wish to remain anonymous. You can join online or see other subscription options at http://www.irishharp.org/join.htm

SPECIAL MEMBERS' TREAT!  

For those of you who join / rejoin the Society before 14th February this year, we have a very special thank you: We can send you a web link to PDFs of Dr. Donal O'Sullivan's seminal work on the 18th century Irish harp manuscripts of Edward Bunting: The Bunting Collection of Irish Folk Music and Song issued by the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society in the 1920s and 1930s. This indispensable and mammoth work—with transcriptions from the MSS and a wealth of scholarly information about each tune—has long been out of print and is well-nigh impossible to find.

SOME 2013 EVENTS

We had a very successful 10th Anniversary Summer Concert Series in Kilkenny, Dublin and Galway in August. This took place just after our 10th Anniversary Scoil na gClairseach—Summer School of Early Irish Harp 2003-2013. You can read about both here: http://www.irishharp.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/2013-directors-report.html     

MUSIC NETWORK AWARD

We are delighted to announce that the HHSI has been awarded more than €7,000 from the Arts Council through Music Network's Music Capital Scheme 2013. This will enable us to commission student replicas of the 18h century Mullaghmast and Rose Mooney harps, half of which will be built here in Ireland. We are excited and encouraged to receive this award and to be able to support Irish-based harp building. Such ground-breaking work would be impossible without the generous support of our Members, who enable us to contribute the required 25% self-funding of these projects.

SCOIL NA gCLAIRSEACH 2014

We've already taken the first bookings for our twelfth Scoil na gClairseach—Summer School of Early Irish Harp, which takes place 13th-19th August 2014 in Kilkenny. Our faculty is drawn from the world's leading historical harpists and scholars in the field. If you can, do come and join us—raw beginners to experts—from four continents, for a week of intensive tuition, lectures, masterclasses and serious amounts of fun! Please visit us here: http://www.irishharpschool.com You can see a PDF of our printed flyer / app. form here: http://www.irishharpschool.com/flyer.pdf Online booking details here: http://www.irishharpschool.com/booking.htm 

To get a flavour of the 2013 summer school, have a look at our photo album here:   http://www.irishharpschool.com/2013/photos/ You can also visit us at http://www.irishharp.org, where you can see the lovely promo short that cinematographer Carlo d'Alessandro and the Scottish company, Siubhal, put together about our summer school.