A rarity, Salem shop knows harps by heart

An underside view shows the workings of a 44-string Salvi Daphne model being serviced at the Harp Connection, which draws clients to its Salem waterfront shop from across New England. (Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff)

SALEM - Let's be honest. Someone mentions the harp, and you think of Harpo Marx first and then the woman in the cocktail dress plucking away during that Sunday brunch with your in-laws last year. Just maybe you remember hearing one played at Symphony Hall. But most of the harps you've seen were in cartoons about heaven, right?

The folks at the Harp Connection, though, will tell you the instrument is definitely on the upswing. Orchestra budgets may be tight, but adults and kids alike are taking up the instrument, Celtic harp remains popular, harpists are playing jazz, and the lap harp is part of music therapy.

"We all try to educate everyone as much as we can about harps and the harp world, because it's basically a hidden world. Not a lot of people know anything about it," said Nicole Sterling, a co-owner of the Salem business.

The Harp Connection has become the go-to spot in New England to buy, rent, or repair a harp. Actually, it's pretty much the only spot. Harpists said there are fewer than a dozen full-service places like it in the country. There used to be only one, the Lyon & Healy Harps showroom in Chicago.

"There aren't that many harp stores. It's not like Kmart," said harpist and Berklee College of Music harp teacher Felice Pomeranz, whose Sudbury organization, the Gilded Harps, books music for some 500 events a year.

"People have flown in from all over the country to visit our showroom," said Sterling. "It's always changing, and we do a lot of Internet sales and phone sales. We do encourage people to come in and actually feel and hear the harp."

"I'm just thrilled that it exists, because it was something we have needed for so long in this area, which is so rich in music and has such a vital harp community," said Grammy-nominated harpist Deborah Henson-Conant of Arlington.

In a Congress Street office complex on the Salem waterfront, the Harp Connection showroom holds dozens of instruments. The largest are pedal harps, the 47-string classical instruments from manufacturers Lyon & Healy or Salvi, with ornate carved frames and price tags that start at $10,500. There are less expensive lever and Celtic harps, and the 26-string, lap-sized Harpsicle goes for $349 and up.

The shop usually sells a few harps a week, Sterling said, plus accessories, strings, and sheet music. Service is in high demand.

"Finding reliable people to service your instrument, or in this case instruments - meaning all the harps the BSO owns - is not always easy in any community at all," said Ann Hobson Pilot, principal harpist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1980. "It's been very handy."

There aren't many certified harp technicians like Rachael Galbraith, who joined the Harp Connection in 2005 after a 12-month training program in Chicago.

"I think there are only about 15 of us in the Lyon & Healy and Salvi technicians guild, which we just started two years ago," she said.

The business was founded in Vermont in 1992 by harpist Karen Rokos and her husband, Cameron Jones. After a spell on Cape Cod, they moved to Salem and incorporated under the Harp Connection name.

"There was nothing on the East Coast. If you wanted to see more than one harp in one place and meet anybody who knew anything about the instrument at all, you had to go to Chicago," Rokos said. "I saw this as an opportunity."

Rokos says she's more of a consultant to the business now, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and playing the harp with Symphony Nova Scotia, Symphony by the Sea on the North Shore, and others. Also a certified harp technician, she "regulates" (tunes) and repairs harps on the side.

"The instrument is attracting more players all the time," said the BSO's Pilot. "The problem with that is as the instrument is attracting more players, the jobs are becoming fewer and fewer.

"It's pretty sad, the state of orchestral playing," Pilot said. "I've announced that I'm retiring at the end of Tanglewood '09, and we had 140 applicants for my one job. So they really do need to expand their ways of earning."

Fortunately, she said, the harp does lend itself to solo performances at weddings, funerals, and everything in between. Jazz and pop also are offering new opportunities.

"That's what's really exciting about the harp, but what it takes is a performer who's really versatile and not afraid to take chances and try new things," said Rokos. "The people who are not going to make it are the people who just play classical music and feel like anything else is just beneath them."

The best-known harpist in the Boston area is probably Henson-Conant, whose new "audience-interactive one-woman musical" that opened yesterday at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge plays off those cartoon images of harps in heaven. The show's title: "What the Hell Are You Doing in the Waiting Room for Heaven?"

"Symphonies used to be, 'Well, we had a harp concerto five years ago. How can we have another one now?' But that was sort of the old way of thinking," Henson-Conant said.

"The new way of thinking is, 'This is an instrument that's exciting,' because it's on the edge of becoming much more mainstream."

Visit harpconnection.com for more information about the Salem store.