Dear friends of harp music,

I hope this finds you well and healthy. We are all dealing with changes in our families, in our community and society. For some, perhaps life hasn’t changed so much, but for most of us life has been altered dramatically with full time child care, loss of work and perhaps even with loss of a family member or a friend. We have to have faith and hope that this too shall pass.
Ever since the pandemic started, I have to admit, it was hard to focus on playing my harp.
That changed last month as Pastor Terry Overfelt and I decided to hold a special virtual Harp and Healing (after we had to cancel in March and April). We dedicate it to all of you dealing with Corona virus pandemic as we all need a little bit of healing of our souls and hope for the future.
I hope it will bring you clarity, faith, hope and peace.

Here is the YouTube link to May Harp and Healing, the nice thing is that now you can watch it anytime it suits you!

A little look behind the scenes of this project if you are interested…

Text: My brother emailed me this Covid – 19 related prose from Slovakia back in late March and it really spoke to me the way it looked at our current predicament and the way we can learn from it and become better humans. I emailed it to Pastor Terry and to my surprise and delight she wanted to include it in our virtual service. She also asked me to speak it in Slovak – in the language it was written in to amplify that this is a global issue. Terry of course speaks the text in English and weaves it with her own meditations and prayers.

Music videos: we recorded these outdoor videos on a very windy day. After viewing them at home, I found out that the audio was so bad, they were unusable. I was quite sad as we put in the effort moving my harp to these locations. Then my 12 year old son Danny came to my rescue! He said that I needed to record a new audio and he could replace the “windy” one with it. Of course this is something I would expect from a professional studio and not my 12 year old, but we decided to give it a try. First I recorded just one song, with headphones on, mind you it had to match the video perfectly! And Danny then convinced me that he really can do this! I re- recorded the remaining 6 songs and he got all those audios replaced! You be the judge how well we did.
The next day we took the final 4 videos in our backyard. This time we were careful not to expose the camera to the wind outs and filmed it from indoors and that worked pretty well for those!

If you got all the way here, thank you! That’s probably more info you needed to know, but you know…proud mom who is amazed by her son’s editing skills 🙂

I also want to thank Paul Pepper, who asked Terry and me to talk about this special Harp and Healing on his Radio Show and here is the link to that segment. The interview was done remotely over the phone.

Also, I would like to invite you to check out my YouTube channel, I added these new videos separately to my channel.
Here is the link to my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFTMA3-Klpo&list=PLQy4vdOsdREGknJl8bg1Sm7znGszsBqIY&index=3&t=234s

This week I also started something new, I opened an account on Ko-fi.com, where if you feel so inclined you can leave a small amount donation if you like my videos and my artistic work in general. Thank you for considering that, you can go to https://ko-fi.com/maria_duhova_trevor_harpist

I also want to let you know that the Hot Summer Nights Festival with the Missouri Symphony that I have been a part of since 2003 has been cancelled this summer. We will have a virtual “Best Of” season. The MOSY staff is also making a great effort to stay in touch with our audiences and are staying relevant and entertaining through Facebook and Zoom events. Please check out this Facebook event they did last Sunday, it can still be viewed on YouTube. Many of our wonderful musicians from all over the USA were part of it, so there are some interesting conversations and beautiful music.
Here is the link to MOSY event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuR9n-bitec
You can also check out their website for current updates and upcoming ZOOM events: https://themosy.org/events/

If you want to stay up to date with me please check out my Facebook and Instagram pages for pictures and updates:
Facebook page, you can find me under https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=maria%20duhova%20trevor%20-%20harpist&epa=SEARCH_BOX

or follow my instagram https://www.instagram.com/maria_duhova_trevor_harp/?hl=en

As a final inspiration for this month, I want to share with you words of my friend Ibtisam Barakat. Ibtisam is a Palestinian / American writer ( if you haven’t read her books, please check them out – Tasting the Sky, Balcony on the Moon)

On April 7th, 2020 she wrote:
Stay home and be very kind and loving to the people you are staying home with. They have become your small world and your big world too. Don’t harm them. Who else do you have but them? Don’t destroy what you build. . .So stay home and be very kind and loving to the people you are staying home with, including your own selves ♥

With wishes for continued good health, take care
Maria