
Get to know Matthew
Matt Gillespie (he/him) is a student from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he graduated from Heritage High School in 2019. He currently is a sophomore business and music double-major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Like many, Matt loves to travel, hike, and hang out with friends and family. However, he has one unique talent: he can play the harp! Matt has been doing so for over half his life.
A family of musicians
His grandfather, Howard Bryan, was interested in the harp for his entire life, as he had always had a passion for music. Later in his career, he decided to finally learn, but his wife (Matt’s grandmother) said he could build a harp cheaper than he could one — so he did! He eventually went on to found a world renown harp restoration company, which he was founder and CEO of for 20 years until his retirement.
When Matt was 8 years old, his grandfather decided to teach him how to play. He has been playing ever since!
Matt has been guided professionally from a young age by Laura Byrne, the harp instructor at both UNC and Duke University. Her teaching is part of what led him to Carolina.
Learn more about Matt and the history of him playing the harp:
Additional Q & A with Matt!
Not as many as I should, but I’ve been doing better this semester. I try to get in at least an hour to an hour and a half every day. It’s not always very successful, but I do my best.
A concert grand pedal harp has 47 strings and 7 pedals. Each string plays a different note and you tune it in C-flat major. Each pedal has three positions: top as flat, middle as natural, and bottom as sharp. You engage a pedal, which pulls on a rod inside the hollow column and that rotates little disks on the neck that will shorten and lengthen the strings. So, if you engage the c-pedal from flat to natural, then all the c-pedals on the harp will change by the disk rotating.
The harp community is a very niche community. We’re all very well connected, even though we are spread apart; I have harpist friends from Singapore, California, China, Venezuela, Germany. In terms of young harpists, it’s about 1 in 10 are guys, and the rest are girls. So, that’s interesting. It can be competitive at times, but overall it’s very collaborative and encouraging. It’s really nice to be able to make a harp joke and have people understand it. The UNC harp community is pretty small. Currently, we only have 3 harpists.
It wasn’t really used outside the household in terms of in a classical music sense by most of the big composers until after Beethoven’s time because you have to tune each string individually and the pedal-action harp, which is the modern benchmark is relatively newer compared to other instruments.
I love French impressionist music. I think my favorite composers are [Michael] Tournier, he’s a harp composer in 20th century France. There are also really great Debussy transcriptions for harp out there. Currently, I am playing a piece by hindemith — which is interesting — and Fauré. I’m really enjoying those pieces.
See and hear UNC's harp ensemble in action:
Healing Harps
The harp is a unique instrument that can be dated back to Ancient Egypt, circa 2500 BC. Its use as healing technique has a similar history, as it is reported there were healing temples in Egypt. Additionally, French monks used harps in the 11th century in funeral ceremonies and African Griots used them for healing.
According to harp researcher Dr. Diana Schneider, the therapeutic use of harps came from observations that the harp vibrations possessed unusual power to calm and energize humans and animals.
Read more about harp’s healing power to the left, and take a listen to some healing harp music below, via Spotify.
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