Reflections on the Kuranda Tea n’ Jam Session

In July we had our 3. Tea n’ Jam session (last year and this year) and it might just have been the best yet!

Liza, who is a Kuranda local, knows the scene there well and she organized a delightful event. From the beautiful decoration to her personal invitations of her friends, she made sure it went without a hitch.

While we have a few performing harpists-cum-teachers in our group, the majority of our members are middle-of-the-road and aspiring harp players, who don’t necessarily play for an audience much. The idea behind the Tea n’ Jam sessions is to give everybody an opportunity to play to the other participants of the event without feeling too self conscious and intimidated by ‘performing’.

At these events we all do some jamming together which is a great thing specially for players that don’t normally play with other people. Its so much fun to create music on the spot, no sheet music involved… just a bit of guidance from one of the very experienced players of our group. On this day that was Natalia Mann.

Later on Natalia played us some of her Resonance Music, created spontaneously, inspired by Liza’s flower arrangement. Joy, another accomplished harpist, presented one of her own creations and me-myself-I got up and performed 2 songs in front of an audience for the first time ever. Wow, what a blast that was.

As Liza had invited non-harpist friend we actually had a real audience on this day, which is different form our usual Tea n’ Jams… We all were munching on the snacks that had been brought along, sipping our tea and listening to beautiful harp sounds - what a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!