THE HARP is the new project of revolutionary harpist Kety Fusco. Chapter I is the first work on vinyl and all digital platforms, out today March 3rd, 2023 via Floating Notes Records: a 19-minute album. Fusco speaks of this album as an experience: the experience of a journey, which begins with the horsehair rubbing along the strings of the harp and ends, for the moment, with a vibrator beating against the harp’s soundboard, producing drones and controversial sounds and an incessant beat of shrieks inside the soundbox.
All sounds are produced by an 80-kilo wooden harp, a carbon electric harp and Kety Fusco’s live electronic manipulation. THE HARP transports you, leaves you imagining, dreaming, angry, confused and above all it must leave you with questions. Fusco explains that she would like people after listening to the album to be left with a bitter taste in their mouths, both positive and negative, because a bitter taste in the mouth is almost always disturbing.
2072 is the first excerpt taken from THE HARP, Chapter I. According to Fusco, “On 13 January 2072 I will die: this video is a reminder of what it was. My melody will accompany me in my passing, reminding me that the world was beautiful before I arrived. I did not love the world I was living in and that is why it did not allow me to stay any longer. Forests precede civilizations, deserts follow them… It’s not my phrase, but I like it“. The composition of this track is based on a live granulation of Kety’s electric harp, combined with drone sounds created with a pulsating massager on the soundbox of the 47-string classical harp, and vocal reminiscences emitted by Kety with scratchy screams inside the harp soundboard, which decorate this post- classical sound.
STARLESS is the brand new single, available digitally on February 17th. The composition of this piece was created with all the classical harp sounds recorded and catalogued by Kety Fusco in her sound library Beyond The Harp. The sounds were subsequently manipulated and assembled into this contemporary, gory-sounding composition. “This is what is left of my body. My harp has destroyed every melodic form of its sound because it died with me. My world is running out and pouring out its rage on me. I will be dead and I will burn in the fire of my home. I am already ashes, ashes of a world that has thought of the most concrete and superficial things, and what remains is a world without stars”.
Kety Fusco and the harp met when she was six years old and they have never left each other since. After years of studying and perfecting the classical harp, Fusco embarked on an exploration of non-traditional harp sounds, made from objects such as hairpins, scotch tape, wax, stones, hair dryers, and so she says: “The harp was born in the 7th century, when the air was different, tastes and experiences had nothing to do with today’s world and to this day I cannot think that there is no evolution: that is why I am designing a new harp, it will still be her, but contemporary and everyone will have the opportunity to approach it; in the meantime, welcome to THE HARP”.
Kety Fusco, graduate in Classical Harp at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana, specialized in Master of Arts in Music Performance , has embarked on a revolution in the harp world. Two years after her graduation, she released her debut album DAZED under Caterina Caselli’s Sugar Music label (with Universal distribution and production by Swiss Music Grand Prix nominee Aris Bassetti), thanks to which she was nominated for three categories at the last Swiss Live Talents Awards (CH) and played her compositions in the hall of the Federal Parliament in Bern. Fusco spoke about her album DAZED: “This album is the result of my instinct to make the harp do a voice. Each composition in fact has a main harp voice, which tells a musical story, enriched by violent, mostly digital electronics. I started like this, trying to use a harp as if it belonged to a woman’s voice. In DAZED my harp sings...”.
Thanks to her instinct and willingness to change the connotation and reputation of the harp, Fusco has been invited to prestigious festivals and venues, such as Locarno Film Festival (CH), Vision Du Reel Film Festival in Nyon (CH), Arena di Verona (IT), Rockomotives Festival (FR), Kino Siska (SL), Paleo Festival, La Notte della Taranta, Montreux Jazz Festival, Waves Festival (AT), Mama Festival (FR), for the President of the Swiss Confederation. etc. She was also invited in summer 2022 to open the French tour of the well-known musician Agnes Obel. Kety Fusco reached one of the most important milestones of her career in 2021, when she was invited by the United Nations to the SDG Global Festival of Action, virtually sharing the stage with Patti Smith and Ben Harper.
Currently, Kety Fusco is continuing her sound research work, she has published a horror soundtrack made solely with harp sounds that she has collected in a personal digital database called Beyond The Harp, and declared as the best library of the month by MusiTech magazine; Kety Fusco completing her new project THE HARP: using the materials of which a classical harp is made (wood, metal and gut), Fusco produces sounds and ambiences that suggest its deconstruction, manipulates its sound with electronic pedals, scratches and destroys the bow on the low strings of the harp, screams inside the sound box. THE HARP is a project that will collect 3 chapters, which will be released on vinyl over the next 3 years and will be performed live in its entirety starting on March 3rd, 2023, debuting tonight at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in London. Suisa Get Going project winner, Kety designing a new harp, with which she wants to change the reputation and alter the vision of this magical instrument.
