Programs & Projects

Harp duo Lilac 94 (Christina Brier and Kathryn Sloat) are recording their debut album and presenting this music in concert. This project will feature works for two harps by an array of contemporary American composers, including Bret Bohman, Jin Hee Han, Rebecca Larkin, Daniel Morel, and Ivan Rodriguez, as well as older works by George Gershwin.

This project is supported by Chamber Music America’s Ensemble Forward program. Lilac 94 is honored to be one of their grant recipients for coaching and recording.

Lilac 94 performed a concert featuring works for 2 harps and piano at the Hand House in Elizabethtown, NY. Read more about the performance here. (June 11-12, 2022 Piano by Nature)

The Juniper Tree by Rebecca Larkin for 2 harps

Prelude, Fugue, Variation by César Franck for 2 harps

Switchback Daredevils by Kincaid Rabb for harp & piano

Snowdrift by Sean William Calhoun for harp & piano

Somnium by Iván Enrique Rodríguez World Premiere for 2 harps

Over the Stone by Karl Jenkins for two harps and piano

On the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Music in the Galleries series (October 5, 2019), Lilac 94 performed works from the "Suites, Stories & Soundscapes" project to take a fresh look at American landscapes through a contemporary musical lens. Works on the program included selections from Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess Suite" (arr. by Stanley Chaloupka), Bret Bohman's "Foglifter," Rebecca Larkin's "The Juniper Tree," and Molly O'Roark's "Tall Tale for Two Harps."

We also performed selections from this program for Mozart for Munchkins in NY (October 6, 2019).

Lilac 94 was joined by theatrical harpist Rosanna Moore in a workshop setting to demonstrate and discuss performing the harp while incorporating unconventional elements into one's harp performance. (June 1, 2019, American Harp Society Summer Institute Workshop, University of North Carolina School for the Arts)

With Maestro Steven Errante at the podium, Lilac 94 joined the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra to perform Sir Karl Jenkins' concerto for harp duo, "Over the Stone" (2002). Scored for two harps, strings, and percussion. The work was commissioned by the Prince of Wales for the Royal Harpist. This is a work Christina and Kathryn are thrilled to have performed. (June 2, 2019, Wilmington Symphony Orchestra at the Wilson Center).

Lilac 94 was pleased to be part of the Canadian premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's KLANG: The 24 Hours of the Day at SMCQ's 2019 Montréal New Music Festival, a notable international festival. Intended to include 24 pieces but left incomplete at the time of Stockhausen’s death (2007), this 21-part work gives space to meditate on time, spirituality, and reality, allowing the audience to reflect on the meaning of mortality. Charting the journey of the soul from the body into the afterlife, it is the final, epic statement of the composer and a fitting capstone to Stockhausen’s massive career. The music ranges from intimate chamber pieces to virtuosic displays and electronic extravaganzas. Lilac 94 performed KLANG's second part, "Freude" (Joy), which was written for two harps. (February 28 & March 1, 2019, presented by Analog Arts & Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) at Satosphère at Société des arts technologiques)

As artists-in-residence at Hill and Hollow Music in Upstate New York, Lilac 94 developed a concert program focused on the composition work of Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961). The residency culminated in an "informance" in which harpists Christina Brier and Kathryn Sloat unpacked Pentacle (1928), one of Salzedo's masterpieces and most difficult works. Rounding out the program was Salzedo's "Tango" and "Rumba" from his Suite of Eight Dances (1943) and "Chanson dans la nuit" (1955). (January 23, 2017 at Hill and Hollow)