| It took Natasha Nathanielsz only seven days to make a harp of her own. She completed her red cedar wood and King Billy pine instrument nearly three years ago at a residential workshop with Geoff Welham in Grafton, Australia. The finished product is nearly as tall as she is - 5 foot 3 inches – though with 32 strings, it’s wider by far. It’s also a hybrid, combining elements from both Celtic and Paraguayan harps.
She began her project with little experience in woodworking, but it was DIY or no harp, says the young musician. (A store bought version would have cost her several thousand dollars which she didn’t have.) The ritual of constructing her own instrument would be followed by the process of mastering it, but the music she now makes is particularly invigorating. “It’s therapeutic,” she says simply, adding, “It feels like it’s just good for the soul, you know?”
 |
| Natasha: Founding her own music therapy centre is her goal. |
At 23, Natasha already knows she would like to work in music therapy one day. But for now, her plans involve a beach down south and a studio of her own. Having just returned from Galle, she’s already annoyed with the chaos of Colombo traffic. Still, she is pleased to find that Sri Lanka is good for her music. “In Sri Lanka, I think I got a new perspective on life. I just fell in love with the island.” A relatively diminutive version of her original harp made the long journey with her – this one is only half her size. Taking it out, she closes her eyes, focusing completely as she uses her fingers to coax a lush cascade of notes from the instrument. If this weren’t an impromptu performance, Natasha would mix in a few electronic beats; perhaps bring in a string quartet or a santoor player. She might even dance.
“When I’m actually ready to perform my music, to do a stage show, I’d like to incorporate dance. It’s such a big part of what I do and create,” she says. In fact, when she was younger, she seemed equally likely to become a dancer. She started learning ballet when she was just a few months past her second birthday and would continue classes for a decade. After her family immigrated to Australia when she was nine, she studied tap dancing, jazz ballet, contemporary dance, Kandyan and even African dancing. After appearing in an audition when she was 13, Natasha was chosen to perform in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Sydney Olympics and Paralympics (she had to wear “a huge fish costume.”) This second career must have seemed particularly viable then, because though she was composing her own music on the piano by age 13, Natasha distrusted her voice.
“For a long time I was very shy about my voice,” she says, “I felt like I had a good voice, somewhere deep down inside, but I wasn’t very good at pitching.” She started receiving lessons when she was 15 from a tutor who was herself a cabaret-jazz singer. “She taught me to see my voice as an instrument or a tool,” Natasha says. The years of training bestowed control and gave her confidence. Years later, she would discover that music could liberate and empower others as well. Working as a music therapist in a centre for people with cerebral palsy, Natasha found that patients who had spent the whole day screaming or refusing to eat, would calm down after a session.
She used her harp as well as singing bowls and ‘sound baths’ to soothe patients who were immobile and unable to communicate. For those with some mobility, she would construct scenarios, envisioning for instance a sunny day on the beach and then accompanying them as they played music inspired by it. “We’d go on mental journeys together,” she says, explaining, “I saw a huge change in them.” Eventually she’d like to found her own music therapy centre. “When I’m ready to settle down a little bit, I don’t want to have to be running around or to live just off my music,” she confesses.
She still has awhile to go (and a Master’s Degree to complete) before she can claim that dream. For now, she’s made Sri Lanka a base from which to travel further afield (she’s already been to Indonesia and Amsterdam this year) and hopes to move out of the city and set up a studio somewhere by a beach. There, she’ll begin work on an EP and hopefully follow it with a collaborative album with a santoor maestro she knows. Though she has no immediate plans to perform, if you’d like to hear some of her music, you’ll find it online at http://www.myspace.com/nathanielsz. |
E-mail
