NEW ALBUM NOW RELEASED

!!! click on album cover above !!!

Available also from Amazon.com

International harpist Christina Tourin presents Geodepédie – Hidden Light, an album title twist on Erik Satie’s beloved “Gymnopedie” composition. In this all-new release, Christina’s crystalline recordings are embedded with meaning from the Callanish Stones of Scotland, embracing worldwide influences from Scottish Traditionals to Japanese & Icelandic lore and Finnish Folktales, all informing Christina’s soothing new music performed on myriad harps; she features Lies Joosten, harp on Track 1, and is occasionally accompanied throughout the album by vocals Buvana Gerlach, minimal percussion, Peter Sprague, Guitar, and a hint of synthesizers: Peter Sprague, Suzanne Doucet, David Eastoe. The album’s overall feeling is hopeful and uplifting, the Traditional Gaelic and Cosmic flavorings offering an enlightening soundtrack to our lives. JWVibe writes, “Her music is like looking into the crystalline light of a newly opened geode; one can see the relationship of the night sky filled with glittering stars, planets and galaxies.”

With the release of her long-awaited new album, Geodepédie – Hidden Light, renowned international harpist and pioneering harp music therapist Christina Tourin says, “may we open ourselves to let light shine forth as the beautiful geode!”   

For Christina Tourin, this powerful, thought-provoking title is perfect for the influential, world-renowned harpist/composer’s sparkling, magically lyrical new album, her first since 2010’s Iona Inspirations, which capped a prolific and prodigious 20 years of composing and recording. Growing up in a house of crystals built by famous minerologist George Howe, it is natural that Christina pays homage to the intricacies of geodes and their connection, and reflection, of our shimmering Universe. Experiencing the magnificent and transcendent in small but significant ways, Christina truly lives a life “as above so below.” As she says, “Expressing through music is not what I do, it’s who I am.” 

Christina is many things to many people: she is a second generation harpist who has studied at McGill University in Montreal and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, who tours extensively throughout Europe and the United States; she is Founder of both the Scottish Harp Society of America and the International Harp Therapy Program, which currently has training centers in multiple countries and languages with Therapeutic Harp Practitioners from 32 countries serving on five continents.  She is an educator, healer, author, speaker and intuitive who captures and preserves folk tales and traditions in her recordings, many Celtic and Gaelic, and also inspired by 18th and 19th Century composers such as Vivaldi, Handel, Satie, Ravel and Debussy. 

“During a recent trip to Scotland and Ireland, I had time to reflect in a Stone Circle as to what this album was about,” Christina says. “With each song, I felt my hands literally being taken over to create the album with mostly first takes. For the first time, I had gained the art of ‘letting go!’ At times, I was not certain how and why some of the pieces transpired – until I went to the Callanish Stones in Scotland. Every reason was revealed from the Stones, and I believe it is all embedded in this album.”

Geodepédie – Hidden Light, is a sonic revelation of a world that still exists if we seek it: A World of Peace, Hope, Light, Life and Love!  – JWVibe

NEW ALBUM NOW RELEASED

!!! click on album cover below !!!

(free shipping in USA for this February!)

Listen to all the sample tracks from the album HERE

 “One who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in Eternity’s sunrise.”

William Blake

Historical Background

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