Harp Spectrum

Author Biography

Ray Rool Ray Pool is a harpist known for his performance in New York's leading hotels. He has been associated with The Waldorf-Astoria for fourteen years and currently appears there in Peacock Alley Restaurant for brunch on Sunday. His repertoire is a broad scope of popular tunes from Broadway, the Big Band Era, and other American standards. His solo album "Moonglow" contains examples of this genre.

Prior to his engagement at The Waldorf-Astoria, Mr. Pool was involved in more than a dozen original Broadway productions in New York. "Evita," "Pacific Overtures," "On The Twentieth Century," "La Tragedie de Carmen" (at Lincoln Center), and a revival of "Mame" numbered among the productions for which he was steadily engaged. Filling in for others, he also performed in New York productions of "Carousel," "Pippin," "Shenandoah," "Sweeney Todd," "Sunday In The Park With George," "La Cage Aux Folles," "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" and "A Chorus Line."

Outside of New York, tours of "A Little Night Music" and "Madama Butterfly" took Mr. Pool through forty-two states and Canada. He also performed in the European premier of "Mass" by Leonard Bernstein at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Austria, in a production mounted by Yale University and video-taped by the BBC for viewing in the US on Theater In America (PBS).

He is the author of various writings on harmony for both lever and pedal harp available in book form and on video. Other publications include numerous collections of solos of both popular repertoire, traditional tunes and seasonal favorites for lever harp, pedal harp and multiple pedal harps. He is also a frequent contributor to The Harp Column and The American Harp Journal with articles on harmony and arranging in addition to biographical vignettes of well known harpists.

The Lyon & Healy International Jazz and Pop Harpfest has figured prominently in his career. Most recently he served on the Artistic Direction Committee of the '99 Harpfest held in Nashville, coordinating all harmony studies for three levels of participants. He was a speaker, performer, and teacher in both 1991 and 1995 at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and served as a judge for the pedal harp competition for Harpfest in Asilomar, CA, in 1997. Additionally he served on the Artistic Committee for Harpfest in Nashville, TN in 1999 and will do so at the next event in 2001.

He has made presentations at annual American Harp Society National Conferences in Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Antonio, Washington, D.C., and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and for the International Society of Folk Harpers and Craftsmen (ISFHC) in Burlington, VT and in Galveston, TX, in June of 1998 as both lecturer and soloist. His workshops based on his harmony studies have been presented throughout the US for colleges, chapters of harp societies and teachers with large classes of private students.

A graduate of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, as an organ major, Mr. Pool later studied harp privately with Dewey Owens and Lucile Lawrence.

Mr Pool can be reached at:

email:rpoolnyc@aol.com

website:http://www.raypool.com

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