Julieanne Rabens: Composer, Harpist, Pianist. Photo credit: John Vellenga, 2004
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Julie with pedal harp. Photo credit: John Vellenga, 2004

Julieanne earned her masters and doctorate in music composition from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studying with Randall Snyder, and her masters of music in harp from Northern Illinois University studying with Liz Cifani. She currently studies harp with Kathy Kienzle. She has composed a harp concerto,  a piano concerto, a cantata, and numerous chamber works. Her compositional style is rooted in Western European Classical music, but is also influenced by jazz and Asian music. Her music strives to express the eclecticism of American culture. She values lyrical lines, audible processes in her formal structures, and has explored a wide range of harmonic systems.

Julie with lever harp. Photo credit: John Vellenga, 2004

 

As a harpist she has focused on classical pedal harp repertoire and original music for double strung harp, but is interested in continuing to deepen her understanding of diverse harp traditions including jazz, Celtic, Paraguayan, West African Kora, Saung Gauk from Myanmar, and other traditions from around the world. Her philosophy of harp playing focuses on phrasing based on vocal models,  exploring a wide range of timbres and dynamics, clearly articulating formal structures and compositional processes through the use of color and contrast, and finding personal meaning in each piece of music.

She currently teaches harp, piano, and composition at Hobgoblin Music in Minneapolis, MN,
at the Saint Francis Music Center in Little Falls, MN, 
and privately in Sartell, MN.

Contemporary Harp Music resource for composers and harpists. Composers please email me to be added.



 

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FAVORITE QUOTES                                              

And what is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of paradox: a purposeful purposelessness or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life-not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and one's desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord. JOHN CAGE

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."  ALBERT EINSTEIN

"I haven't studied mathematics, but I should say that in maths there comes a stage when your can no longer calculate, where you enter into infinity. I believe that in the same way a masterpiece fulfills a set of conditions which we cannot measure, which escapes us, which is beyond ourselves, which ensures a balance between the means and what emerges; although the creator may not be aware ot it." NADIA BOULANGER

 

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Email Julie Rabens
651.808.0669