By Hannah Mueller

Gillian Grassie is a professional harpist and singer/songwriter. She has just released an album that fuses pop and jazz on an instrument that musicians rarely attempt to employ in either genre. But perhaps what is most remarkable about Gillian Grassie is that in addition to all these accomplishments, she is also a sophomore at Bryn Mawr.

Grassie performed at her release party for her new album, Serpentine, at the Milkboy in Ardmore last Friday night to a full house. Her music draws on artists like Dar Williams, Ani DiFranco, Debussy, and Billy Holliday. The nontraditional use of a harp as the main instrument, in addition to her distinctive voice, makes the music brilliantly original.

“I feel that the harp has a place in mainstream music,” Grassie says, and her new album certainly forges the way for the instrument. Both the harp and her voice have a wide range, and the light quality of the harp’s sound and Grassie’s strong soprano are ideally suited to each other.

For as long as she can remember, Grassie, a Philadelphia native, had been interested in learning how to play the harp. Because lessons were not readily available, she tried guitar and piano before meeting her harp teacher at age twelve. She started learning the Celtic style, moved on to classical, and ultimately to her signature style, a combination of alternative pop and jazz.

While studying in Switzerland, Grassie had time off from her many commitments in high school and “started messing around with the harp more, trying to cover John Mayer songs, goofing around.” She also started writing poetry again, and then lyrics, after being introduced in an English class to the poet Philip Larkin. Her unique brand of music was beginning to emerge.

Graduating early from high school, Grassie spent a year as a part-time Temple student before enrolling as a freshman at Bryn Mawr last year. Now she maintains a rigorous schedule of alternating days of music and classes, touring some weekends.

The set at her release concert last Friday included all of the songs from Grassie’s first full-length release, Serpentine, in addition to several songs off her previously released EP, To an Unwitting Muse. The new album is about coming of age, touching on various themes.

“Serpentine is an album about growing up,” Grassie says. “It celebrates the process rather than the arrival – the often snake-like shape life takes in getting from point A to point B – and emphasizes the importance of questions rather than answers.” Grassie worked on the album over the last year at Milkboy with the help of her co-producer, Tim Sonnefeld.

The live instrumentation behind the harp and Grassie’s vocals included Mike Dryberg on drums, Rick Sorkin on guitar and Chris Coyle on upright bass. The bass especially complemented the harp as another relatively unusual instrument not often encountered in the realm of pop music.

Most of Grassie’s songs started out with her playing a short harp solo, which was a subtle way of drawing in the audience. The diversity of inspiration for her songs demonstrates an impressive level of artistic maturity. She described her song “Tell Me” as being about “losing self-control” upon coming to college and the people who helped her find her footing at that time and throughout her life, including her sister and mom. “Sweet Metallic” was inspired by time Grassie spent working as a nanny for children whose father was an officer in Iraq and also by the latent racial tensions raised in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This “somber” song, as she described it, actually sounded as upbeat as most of her others, which was a conscious choice on her part. “Protest songs as a genre suffer from tiresome stereotyping and I wanted to write something that was sonically innocuous, so that people wouldn’t immediately write off what I was saying in the lyrics.” Grassie’s passion and virtuosity were evident just by watching her as she plucked the strings and sang.

In November, Grassie will be making her New York debut at The Living Room. She is considering expanding her touring schedule to include more of the U.S. and possibly Germany next summer. She hopes to tour more regularly in the future, especially at colleges. On November 3rd, she will be playing at the Nimbus Open Mic event (3-5 PM). To find out more about Gillian Grassie and her music, visit gilliangrassie.com or myspace.com/harppower.

Related articles

• Gillian Grassie BMC ‘10 Places Second in New York Songwriting Competition
• Voxtrot Offers a Solid Trio with Latest EP
• Learning to Listen, Delighted to Hear
• In Brief
• Question of the Week
• Timberlake Proves Less Than Sexy
• On The Record
• Aled Jones:
• Low’s Things We Lost in the Fire proves that less is more
• Spoken Word Night Attracts Wide Range of Students