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Registrar's Letter (DOCX format) |
Registration Form (DOCX format) |
Our guests this year are Candace Lark and Kathy deAngelo. Bios for them are given below.
More information coming soon!
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Seasoned harpist Candace Lark has performed for hundreds of events. She's
shared the stage with many orchestras, Lansdown Symphony, Mainline Symphony,
and the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra to state a few. She is a repeat performer
at many of Philadelphia's top performance venues like The Academy of Music,
The Kimmel Center, and the Wilma Theater. She is a sought-after harpist in the
tri-state area performing regularly with various ensembles and collaborating
on special projects.
Her tendency to shy away from mainstream harp repertoire has led her to be the harpist for two unique groups. The Illharmonic Hip-Hop Orchestra, and The Divine Hand Ensemble. The Illharmonic combines the raw energy and passion of Hip-Hop with the beautiful, sweeping melodies of live orchestra. The Divine Hand Ensemble has been described as "hypnotic, breathtaking, and mesmerizing, an amalgamation of magic, science, and music", the ensemble is the world's only theremin-fronted band. Candace also works with her former harp teacher as a certified Harp Mastery Coach, coaching harpists all over the country to meet specific harp goals. She's also the Co-founder of Harp Quest a supplemental harp program for young harpist. During the summer you can find Candace working alongside her former teacher mentoring young harpists at Harp in the Mountains in upstate Pennsylvania.
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Kathy DeAngelo has been a tour de force in the folk harp world for decades;
as a performer, teacher and event organizer. She started playing traditional
Irish music in the early 1970s on guitar and then fiddle and took up the
harp in 1984. She and her husband, multi-instrumentalist Dennis Gormley, have
been performing as McDermott's Handy (named after her Irish music mentor Ed
McDermott) for nearly 50 years. In 1985 she knew that if she wanted to play
with other harpers she'd have to create them-so she started teaching. That
desire to bring harp players together lead her and Debbie Brewin-Wilson,
whom she met at a coffeehouse gig, to start the annual Harpers' Escape in
1992, still running today and teaching Irish and Scottish traditional music.
Kathy has been part of the Somerset Folk Harp Festival since its inception
in 2001, as concert manager for years then as director from 2009-2022;
turning it into the largest folk harp event in the world and shepherding it
online during the pandemic. The sheer impact of her performing, teaching
and organizing careers have been widely recognized. She and her husband
Dennis were inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Mid-Atlantic Comhaltas
Ceoltóiirí Éireann in 2014 and recognized for their
regional influence by the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame in 2015.
Kathy was among the recipients of the first NJ Heritage Fellowship grants
in 2023. She and Dennis were awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the
Somerset Folk Harp Festival in 2025.
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