Can you really play harp and sing at the same time?

People ask me this question all the time, and I think what they are really asking is this: can you sing well enough while playing? Can you play the harp well enough while singing? Surely one of them has to suffer.

The answer is yes — you absolutely can do both.

But I also think the question misses the point entirely.

The harp and the voice are not the ultimate goal. It is all about telling a bloody good story.

I came to singing and harp playing from necessity as much as passion. Creating music is expensive, and relying on accompanists meant double the cost and often less creative ownership over the work. I wanted to be able to rely on myself completely as an artist. At the time I was deeply immersed in Celtic music and the storytelling world of Loreena McKennitt, and the harp felt like a natural extension of that world.

I was classically trained as a singer from a very young age, and later classically trained on the harp by Michael Jeffries in Tasmania, himself a student of Marcel Grandjany. Classical training in rural Australia in the 1990s was the best education available to me, and my mother did everything possible to make that happen.

But over time, my path moved far beyond classical music.

I have wandered through Celtic music, cabaret, theatre, and blues, yet the thing that remained constant through every genre was storytelling. Voice and story always came first for me. If the story is not interesting, the music does not interest me either.

People often imagine that singing and playing simultaneously is mainly about coordination. Of course there is technical work involved. In the beginning, the accompaniments were simpler. Even now, especially in blues, a sparse accompaniment is sometimes exactly what serves the narrative best. The music should support the emotional truth of the song, not overwhelm it.

What surprises people is that combining the two never felt unnatural to me. It was simply a process of adding more skills with every song I learned.

That said, technique matters enormously.

Today there is often a desire for everything to be quick and effortless, but artistry does not work that way. You cannot open yourself emotionally to interpretation if your brain is still panicking over difficult passages or uncertain technique.

You have to practice.

I practice every day for around two hours. The point of discipline is freedom. When I walk onto a stage, I do not want to think about the mechanics anymore. I want to inhabit the songs completely.

That relationship to practice has evolved with age. I was disciplined in my early twenties before I had children, less so during certain periods of life, and far more disciplined again now in my forties. When I took up the harp at nineteen, I was already considered “late” to begin a classical instrument. My teacher certainly reminded me of that. So I understood very early that discipline would have to compensate for lost time.

Now, preparation gives me confidence. If I know I am truly prepared, I know the performance will not simply be good — it can be brilliant. I hate winging it.

People also misunderstand the harp itself. Many still see it purely as a classical instrument, despite the fact that I have almost never used it that way in thirty years of performing. The harp can be rhythmic, dark, percussive, sensual, raw. It can support blues and cabaret just as powerfully as Celtic music. There are extraordinary harpists around the world constantly reinventing what the instrument can do.

Although I will admit one thing: they are heavy beasts to tour with.

Of course things go wrong sometimes. Singers forget lyrics. Long drives between European shows blur together. Live music is messy because human beings are messy. That is exactly why audiences love it.

I never feel overwhelmed on stage. Quite the opposite. The stage is the most peaceful place in the world for me. It has been my home for nearly forty years. Emotion in performance is not a failure of control — it is the entire point.

So can you really play harp and sing at the same time?

Yes.

But the real question is whether you can make people feel something while you do it.