harp

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

In February of 2007 the harp world lost one of its most talented and sensitive performers in the person of harpist Rafaele Schilewa. She had been diagnosed a scant 20 months earlier with a form of breast cancer that turned out to be devastatingly aggressive. Rafaele was my dearest friend and a treasured collaborator on a number of my recordings. She was also a tremendously gifted orchestral harpist and soloist with a wonderful career in her home country of Germany. The celtic inspired CD we were working on together at the time of her diagnosis is, in fact, still in pre-production due to my attempts to regroup and rework some of the material now that I no longer have her input. I have struggled for a long time with my grief at her passing and what to do to best honor her memory. To that end, I have decided to send a portion of the profits from the recordings purchased on this website to organizations that benefit breast cancer victims, whether it be through funding for cure research, surgical reconstruction, or hospice.

She and I had a great time making these recordings and I can still hear her laughter at the outtakes! I hope you will enjoy the music in the spirit in which it was created and may you never lose a loved one to this terrible disease. I still have great hope that we will one day find a cure!

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