About

Described by the Denton Record-Chronicle as “evangelizing for the harp,” Linda-Rose Hembreiker fell in love with her instrument as a young child, seeing it in Disney’s The Aristocats and Fantasia. From that point on, she worked towards realizing her dream of learning to play the harp so that she could share its beauty and grace with audiences and students.  

Continuously working with composers and arrangers, she is passionate about creating new music for the harp. Pieces she has premiered include: Chapman Welch’s Four Pieces For Solo Harp and Stratosphere Exit Scenarios, Jame’s Worlton’s The Etiquette Of Ice and Dilute Light, Isaiah Castro’s Dios Mío, and Yo Goto’s The Talking Trees Tell Great Secrets. She also chaired the Los Angeles Celebrates The Harp: New Music Composition Competition (made possible by grants from the American Harp Society). 

Her most recent projects include lecture recitals on the historical context that informs the melancholy harmonies and ethereal textures of Debussy’s Sonate for flute, viola, and harp, and the cultural symbolism that informs BedřichSmetana’s symphonic poem Die Moldau as transcribed for solo harp by Hans Trneček. 

She has played at Yale’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, and the Soka Performing Arts Center, and she frequently plays with the Southern California Brass Consortium and Los Cancioneros Masterchorale. Dr. Hembreiker can be heard on the Klavier Wind Project recordings: Retrospectives, Passions, Poetics, Allegories, and the GIA recordings: Transformations, Donald Grantham, Joseph Schwantner, with the North Texas Wind Symphony, and on the C. F. Peters recordings Music Of The Americas and Reflections with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra and the AWSO’s harp.

Committed to scholarship and teaching as well as performing, she has had articles published in the American Harp Journal on Alexander Technique and on the history of the Northern California Harpists Association; she has also given presentations about various aspects of teaching for the American String Teachers Association National Convention and the American Harp Society National Conferences and Institutes. 

Dr. Hembreiker teaches at Cal State University Los Angeles, Irvine Valley College, and the Orange County School For The Arts. 

She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Harp Performance and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from the University of Southern California, and Master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Harp Performance from the University of North Texas. Her principal teachers include Sylvia Fellows, Ellie Choate, JoAnn Turovsky, Ellen Ritscher, and Heidi Lehwalder.