Linda-Rose Hembreiker fell in love with her instrument as a young child, seeing it in Disney’s The Aristocats and Fantasia. Described by the Denton Record-Chronicle as “evangelizing for the harp,” she is focused on sharing its beauty with audiences and students.
Continuously working with composers and arrangers, she is passionate about creating new music for the harp. She premiered Steven Mahpar’s Upon Looking Up… with soprano Natalie Buickians at the 2023 American Harp Society National Summer Institute; past premieres include: Chapman Welch’s Four Pieces For Solo Harp and Stratosphere Exit Scenarios, James Worlton’s The Etiquette Of Ice and Dilute Light, as well as Yo Goto’s The Talking Trees Tell Great Secrets. She also served as chair of the Los Angeles Celebrates The Harp: New Music Composition Competitions (made possible by grants from the American Harp Society).
Linda-Rose has played at the Yale International Festival Of Arts And Ideas, the Meyerson Symphony Center (Dallas), the Soka Performing Arts Center (Aliso Viejo), and Zipper Hall (Los Angeles); she frequently plays for Los Cancioneros Masterchorale and the Santa Clarita Masterchorale. She 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 Americasand Reflections with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra and the AWSO’s harp.
Committed to scholarship and teaching as well as performing, Linda-Rose has had articles published in the American Harp Journal on Alexander Technique, the history of the Northern California Harpists Association, and the founding of the American Harp Society. 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 Irvine Valley College, California State University Los Angeles, and the Orange County School For The Arts.
She was named the Greater Los Angeles Area Section of the California Chapter of the American String Teachers Association's Outstanding Studio Teacher Of The Year (2024), and serves as an ASTA CAP evaluator at the local and national levels.
Her students have graduated with harp performance degrees from California State University Los Angeles, Cal State University Fullerton, Wesleyan University, and Indiana University. Their accomplishments include placing first in their division of the Greater Los Angeles Area Section of ASTA's Solo Harp Competition, placing first in the Julia Louise Herman Edwards Competition (Dallas), being awarded substantial Valeria Finzi Scholarships (Los Angeles), playing in masterclasses at the American Harp Society Summer Institutes (for Heidi Lehwalder and Caroline Lizotte), and passing ASTA CAP levels with honors and distinction.
Linda-Rose holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Harp Performance and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Studio Art 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 (Celtic harp), Ellie Choate, JoAnn Turovsky, Ellen Ritscher, Heidi Lehwalder, and Ann Marie Liss.
Classical Harp: Performances and Lessons
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