Harpist ~ Performer ~ Composer ~ Author ~ Educator ~ Mystic
Christina Tourin’s latest individual single releases can be enjoyed by going to the following services: Three songs have made the finalists in the InterContinental Music Awards: Unité from Echoes of Angels, Willow from Prayer for the Living Trees and In the Glow from Inspirations.
She began playing harp at the age of four. She received Music and Education degrees from the University of Vermont and also studied harp at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and at McGill University in Montreal.
After her studies in Counseling/Psychology at the University of Vermont and training in Resonant Kinesiology under the tutelage of Susan Borg, she continued on to receive her Music Therapy training at Arizona State University under the directorship of Barbara Crowe.
As an International recording and touring artist, she has concertized extensively. She is an active workshop organizer and has been instrumental in the revival of the folk harp since the early 1970″s. In 1982 she founded the Scottish Harp Society of America and is the Founder and Director of the International Harp Therapy Program established in 1994. Healing with sound, working in hospitals and hospices, the labyrinth, composing, teaching, and writing books round out her full life.
“One who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in Eternity’s sunrise.”
Christina Tourin is praised for bringing thousands of people to the harp through her workshop organizational skills; for introducing the modes into harp education/performance in the early 1970’s; and instrumental in developing the small interactive small therapy harp into the harp building world with Harold Westover.
As one of the foremost leading educators of the harp, she excels in her ability to combine harp history, culture, science and spirituality into her teaching and has educated multitudes of harp students through her signature programs, Creative Harping©, Rainbow of Sound™ and Color My World© plus private teaching for the past 50 years!
Christina is a Therapeutic Musician (TMus) and Music Therapist (MT) having studied under the tutelage of Barbara Crowe at Arizona State University. Her main focus is CONVERGENCE – bringing together all those who use music, sound and the arts for enrichment and well-being.
Author of the respected and comprehensive book, A Cradle of Sound-Harp Therapy Manual, she is the founder and director of the International Harp Therapy Program. She has 15 recordings distributed internationally and has performed extensively worldwide.
Christina Ruth Cooper Tourin grew up in the gentle rolling hills in Maine. She began her life listening to the beautiful sounds of her mother”s golden concert harp.
Her mother, Ruth Hersey Cooper, studied music with Marcel Grandjany, the grand master of the harp at the Juilliard School of Music in New York before settling in Maine.
It was not long before little “Tina” would sit on her highchair and start playing tunes of her own. Her life was full of Ravel and Debussy and she danced to the beautiful melodies that her mother played. Sounds rang forth also from her grandmother’s piano playing and the students that came for lessons.
By age 8, Christina was performing frequently on YOUTH CAVALCADE, a television show in Portland, Maine.
At age 11, her father, Donald MacKay Cooper, changed jobs and the family, (Tina with her two younger brothers), moved to Branford, Connecticut. During her teenage years she and her mother were active in the American Harp Society and performed at numerous recitals throughout the Southern Connecticut area.
Christina began playing in trio ensembles at Yale University and performed with various orchestras and off-Broadway shows around the New Haven area.
After leaving Connecticut she enrolled in the University of Vermont, studied Elementary and Music Education and received her B.S. degrees in 1982. In 1974 she was chosen to attend the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria for study under Marianne Oberascher. Upon returning to Vermont, she became the harpist with the Vermont Symphony, the Vermont Philharmonic and continued her harp studies by traveling to McGill University each weekend.
It was in 1975 that she first became interested in the small Celtic harp after traveling to Scotland and meeting harp maker Ian Firth. Upon her return she was led to Robbie Robinson in Mt. Laguna, California who is known to be the father of the Folk Harp Revival in the United States. Christina became the east coast coordinator of the Folk Harp Society and continues to be active in the Society which is now the International Society of Folk Harpers and Craftsmen. Tis no surprise that she ended up living in Mt. Laguna for 25 years as a result having met the Robinsons and the harp community living in what is known as harp heaven,
Meeting early music instrument maker, Peter Tourin in Vermont, she soon became proficient and knowledgeable in the art of harp building and together crafted 75 Celtic and Renaissance harps.
During the years that they spent together, she delved into Historical Harps; studying Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Style as well as Celtic Music. Their sons, Mischa and Jaime showed an interest in music at young ages.
Mischa Tourin
Jaime Tourin
Now as young men, Jaime is the CEO of Maui Tempeh Company and artiste extraordinaire of Proteapods jewelry. Life is grand with Jude Koa and Avalon Nalu, the Lights of his life! Mischa is a wilderness therapy survival guide – Sterlingmtnguides.com – and teaches young adults to find their way in the world. He spent a year teaching English in Japan and is an avid rock climber. A loving family man with two beautiful daughters, Hazel Ashley and Rowan Ruth, he homesteads in Vermont. They both enjoy making music. Four generations of a musical family are now becoming five – from Christina”s grandmother, to mother, to her, to her sons and now to her grandchildren!
Ruth – Christina – Avalon
As one of the foremost leading educators of the harp, who founded the International Harp Therapy Program in 1990, there are currently training centers in multiple countries and languages. Therapeutic Harp Practitioners from 32 countries serving on five continents have studied Christina’s signature style and are spreading the universal language that “Music IS Love”. She feels this is an expression of her soul purpose, the earthly and spiritual reality that, as she likes to quote, “Music is not what I do, it’s who I am.”
IHTP Cover
From classical masterpieces, Celtic traditional, and sonic innovations from other cultures and countries to improvisational jazz, upbeat bluegrass and pop, music has been the constant throughout Christina’s life. There’s always been a tune wafting through her mind, helping her relate to the world, and there’s been a constant flow of melodies that seemingly drifted down from the heavens to provide not only a comforting soundtrack to life’s ups and downs, but serve as a catalyst for her to fulfill her visions of how her chosen instrument could transform lives, emotionally and spiritually.
While collaborating with wonderful musician friends on what she calls “little sparkles that illumine my whole being through the generosity of the Creator,” she has brought thousands to the instrument through her workshop organizational skills, introduced the modes into harp education/performance, and launched and developed her signature programs signature programs, Creative Harping©, Rainbow of Sound™ and Color My World.©
Rainbow-of-Sound-Children
When she says “Music is Love,” it’s also because she has seen lives can change in a very personal way through her private teaching of thousands of students over the past 50 years. The International Harp Therapy Program currently has affiliate programs in The Netherlands, Italy, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, and the Americas. While perhaps only the start of a list of countless accolades across many musical endeavors, her lifetime of dedication to educating people on the harp has always been her way of making a difference in the world.
Christina’s training in Resonant Kinesiology instilled in her a burning desire to make sure that the world becomes aware of the power of sound frequencies. She believes that understanding resonance in relationship to the human body and mental and emotional states can make a great difference.
30 years IHTP
Explaining the vision that came to her in the early 90s that directly inspired the creation of the International Harp Therapy Program, Christina says that it’s all about the Power of the Tor – a hill in Glastonbury, England that’s often mentioned in Celtic mythology, particularly in myths linked to King Arthur. She says, “Being told by two seers at a Body Spirit Mind Festival in Burlington where I was performing harp music, I was told to go to Glastonbury Tor where the Lei line runs strong through the sacred places in England. I was told that I would find my life purpose work there, and indeed it was truly a life changing event! And now three decades later, thousands of students have been trained through the program and its affiliate centers throughout the world and are serving humanity with sound, music and harp! This has been one of the most powerful mystical experiences as I have journeyed on this Earth plane!”
Several years earlier, Christina had a profound, life changing near death experience which changed her approach to creating music from her classical training (reading and memorizing) to a sudden realization that all kinds of music was flowing through her fingers without any conscious realization of what she was doing. She started carrying a small recorder with her so that when she went into the studio, merely listening to what she had recorded would trigger the music to come alive again. “It seemed like the notes were falling out of the heavens and into my fingers,” she says. “It took a while to analyze what was happening so I could break it down into teachable steps for the students, but it has served us very well.”
For 15 years until the her duties with the school took precedence, Christina was a prolific recording artist whose array of popular CDs include White Rose (1991), Emerald Harp (1995), Echoes of Angels (1997), Heaven’s Seven (2006), Illumination (2008), Prayers for the Living Trees (2008) and Iona Inspirations (2010). Now that she has set the IHTP in to the hands of talented, administration oriented leaders, she plans to continue teaching and begin composing and recording again.
Students – Braille Institute
Trained both at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and at McGill University in Montreal, Christina’s fascinating musical life has taken her from Ireland, where she’s brought the National Instrument of the harp to blind children – a practice she has also brought to the Blind Institute of San Diego – to Vermont where she performed six nights a week year round for 17 years for the Von Trapp Family at their Austrian Chalet Lodge. She’s also performed with Paul Winter, Tim Wheater, and Steve Hall.
Andrea and Christina Playing in Italy
While in Michelstadt, Germany performing a fundraiser for the Indian guru AMMA, she met the young, talented singer Andrea Salvatore and for over six years has been touring with him as a vocal/harp duo.
These are the sacred, transcendent moments where Christina is most fully alive, bringing her instrument to life to share with the world the deepest, most profound truth of the universe, which is also the source of all she creates.
White Rose and Tina
