Harp lessons in London

Complete beginners, including adults starting the instrument for the first time, and adult learners returning to a harp they last played years ago. Neither is unusual and neither is too late.

Children and young players working through the graded exam syllabus, whether for ABRSM, Trinity or another board.

Advanced students preparing for auditions, competitions, music college entry or a specialist music school place. This is territory Huw knows from the inside, having come through the Junior Department of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, BBC Young Musician and a full scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

Players on other instruments, and pianists in particular, who want to add the harp, and orchestral players needing to prepare specific harp parts.

Technique is the foundation: hand position, tone production, placing, and the physical habits that decide whether playing stays comfortable over years rather than becoming painful. Technical problems solved early save a great deal of undoing later.

Repertoire is chosen for the individual player rather than issued from a list, and is meant to be both a stretch and a pleasure.

Pedal technique, sight-reading, memorisation and practice method are taught explicitly rather than left to be picked up. How to practise is, for most students, the single highest-value thing a teacher can pass on.

For students working towards something specific, lessons cover exam preparation across the graded syllabus, audition and competition preparation, and conservatoire and specialist school entry, including how to build a programme and how to handle the day itself.

Huw is a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music on a full scholarship, where he studies with Professor Emerita Skaila Kanga, Suzanne Willison-Kawalec and Catrin Finch. On graduating from his undergraduate degree there he received both the President's Prize for the Most Outstanding Student and the Exam Board Prize for the highest final recital mark.

He is one of only two people ever to reach the final of the USA International Harp Competition twice, and the first to win its Concerto Prize twice. He has also won the United Kingdom Harp Competition, the Nansi Richards Scholarship and the Gold Medal in the Duo Division of the Hong Kong International Harp Competition.

That competition record is directly relevant to teaching for one reason: much of what a student is preparing for, whether that is an exam, an audition or a competition, involves performing well on a single day under pressure. That is a skill, it can be taught, and it is taught here alongside the music.

In-person lessons take place in London and the surrounding area. Online lessons are taught worldwide and work well; a great deal of harp teaching is about hands, sound and thinking, all of which come across clearly on a good connection.

Lesson length, frequency and rates are agreed to suit the student, and a first conversation is the easiest way to work out what would suit. Please get in touch to ask about availability.

This stops more people than anything else, and it should not. Harps can be hired, which is how most beginners start, and a lever harp is a perfectly good and much less expensive instrument to begin on before any decision about a pedal harp is needed.

Advice on hiring, on what to look for in a first instrument and on what is worth spending money on is part of teaching, and costs nothing to ask about before you commit to lessons.