Arianna Savall, harp
Arianna Savall wants to revive an ancient tradition with the help of early music and new musical creations: accompanying herself singing on the harp. As a soloist, she performs with various ensembles and also passionately dedicates herself to early music, improvisation and contemporary music.
About the artist
the Harp Fairy
Career
Born in Basle into a family of Catalan musicians, Arianna Savall Figueras began her classical harp studies with M. Barrera and her vocal studies with M.D. Aldea at the conservatory in Terrassa. She specialised in historical harp with H. Rosenzweig and singing with K. Widmer in the area of early music at the Scola Cantorum Basiliensis.
On stage
As a soloist, she has performed with various ensembles, such as Hesperion XXI, Rolf Lislevand Ensemble, La Fenice, Melpomen Ensemble, Ricercar Consort, Mala Punica, Vox Clamantis, Il Desiderio, Ensemble Cello Octet Amsterdam, Capella Antiqua Bambergensis, Le Baroque Nomade etc., and collaborated with conductors including her parents, Jean Tubery, Olari Elts, Jaan-Eik Tulve, Tonu Kaljuste, Manel Valdivieso, Pascal Crittin, Andrew Lawrence-King and others.
Arianna Savall Figueras has performed in Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, South America, Australia, Japan, China, New Zealand, Turkey and Israel.
Recordings
She has also made numerous recordings of concerts and opera productions, in particular for Alia Vox, ECM, Naïve, Harmonia Mundi, Aeolus and CAB Records, many of which have won awards. She is known in the international press as “the Harp Fairy.”
Arianna Savall Figueras’s passion for early music and improvisation has also taken her the opposite extreme of contemporary music, an area in which she works intensively with Swiss composer Conrad Steinmann and Estonian composers Helena Tulve and Arvo Pärt.
Her careers as a singer and harpist blend together in her solo records “Bella Terra” and “Peiwoh” (ALIA VOX), in which she performs her own compositions, as well as in her appearances with her ensemble at numerous festivals. Singing while accompanying oneself on the harp is an ancestral tradition that Arianna Savall Figueras wishes to revive by means of both early music and new musical creations. Together with her partner, Petter Udland Johansen, in 2009 she created the Hirundo Maris ensemble, specialising in early music and their own musical creations.
