Butterfly Lover's Harmonica Concerto
Classical Harmonicist
You can't be everywhere unless you can go everywhere, and the
mouth organ's small size and sturdiness has made it the most
portable musical device. Less than two hundred years after its debut,
the harmonica has become transcendent, arguably the most popular
instrument in history. It has been to both poles, down the Amazon,
and to the summit of Mt. Everest. In its most spectacular field trip, it
became the first instrument to serenade us from outer space.
The harmonica is based on the principle or the free reed, but unlike its cousin,
the concertina, it is brought to life not with mechanical
bellows but by the player's breath.  This gives mouth organists several
advantages not available to players of other free-reed instruments: a
full dynamic range, draw and blow notes (and thus the ability to
make music and breathe simultaneously), a variety of vibratos and attacks,
and the capacity to play notes not built into the instrument.
These are crucial differences. The harmonica is an accordion with soul.
Of course, it all comes back to whose voice is doing the throwing.
The mouth organ is supposedly the one instrument that anyone can
play, yet the truth is that the only thing rarer than a person who has
never owned a harmonica is a player who has done it justice. There is
no clear-cut career path for the professional mouth organist, and the
players celebrated in these pages have as much in common with
Yew Hong-Jen as they do with Mozart or Paganini. These are
some of the most remarkable musicians in history.
Yew Hong-Jen ,  The Classical
harmonica virtuoso from Singapore inspired
from so many of his favorite harmonica players was so enjoyable that has enjoyed its greatest
success in the world, and the most famous player in mouth organ history is the son of a Baltimore
plumber who has spent most of his adult life in England---Larry Adler. The most celebrated
classical player is a Canadian who mastered the harmonica during a stay in a German prison
camp-Tommy Reilly. The first full-time American classical harmonicist was an authority on
the Italian Renaissance-John Sebastian. who lived out his last years in a villa in the
south of France. And one of the most prominent classical harmonicists had his first
taste of success as the leader of a three-hundred-piece harmonica band in his hometown
of Shanghai-Cham-Ber Huang. The Hong Kong great master of classical harmonica located
in America since 1957-Lou Mok. Artistic wiliness, even when armed with a tool as
seemingly straightforward and uncomplicated as the harmonica. The variations on The
Sound are infinite, as the articals and playing of Yew Hong-Jen in these pages make
clear. They shared a love for a unique instrument, blew by its theoretical boundaries,
and ensured its future-who threw their voices and made the harmonica sing.
By - Rose Mary
Read More ... About Yew Hong Jen
Read More ... Butterfly Lover's Harmonica Concerto
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