Re: [Harp-L] solo gig

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"brian.irving" wrote:
<I've been asked to play a 1 hour solo (may be help from a percussionist) gig
<at a venue in Scotland.  Question is what to play?  I intend doing a mixture
<of traditional Scottish tunes plus some folk and a few blues items.
<
<I regard myself as an advanced intermediate player, certainly not at a
<professional standard!!  My usual gig is in a gigging blues band.
<
<I'm thinking of stuff like Work Song, John Henry, medley of Robert Burns
<songs, some Gaeliic airs, traditional folk songs like Hills of
<Killiecrankie, Rattlin', Roarin' Wille, etc.
<
<Any ideas from this wonderful, eclectic community?  Please feel free to
<pepper me with suggestions for a solo harp/vocal gig.

I spent several years doing solo gigs with a repertoire of original compositions and solo harmonica arrangements of other people's tunes. I think it's a tough gig to pull off;  certainly it was tough for me.  Solo harmonica is not an established genre, and audiences have to figure out how to react to it before they can surrender to it.  Audiences nowadays have trouble sitting still for a solo piano performance, so a solo harmonica performance is even tougher.

It's difficult especially if your audience is drinking, which means that they're also talking, laughing, and paying more attention to each other than to you.  If you're playing a room where people will be drinking, I strongly recommend that you get a pianist or guitarist to accompany you, or do so yourself.  

Try to set things up so that about 2/3 of your material will be familiar to the audience, which will help them establish some context for the performance, and understand your playing without struggling to understand the repertoire at the same time.  If you can get any kind of accompaniment, including recorded accompaniment--Todd Parrot uses recordings, so why not you?--then do it.  If you have accompaniment, use it on about 2/3 of the material, and do the other 1/3 unaccompanied, which will help the audience enjoy both more deeply.

Finally, keep smiling, keep playing, and if something goes wrong, blame it on the drummer.

Thanks, Richard Hunter


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