Artist: Gloria Agostini
Gloria Agostini (May 30, 1923 – July 26, 2004) was a Canadian harpist. She is best known for being one of the few harpists to have played jazz, although she is also a classical musician, session musician and teacher.
Born in 1923 in Montreal, she began learning harp at the age of twelve. At the age of fifteen, in New York, she followed the teaching of Marcel Grandjany. At sixteen, she made her professional debut as a harpist in the New York ABC Radio Studio Band. From 1940 to 1942, she was a harpist in the orchestra of a Canadian radio station.
From 1943, it was in New York that she led an intense career as a studio musician (radio and recordings) and concert performer. She played variety, classical, pop, jazz, and film music.
She also taught at Yale University in 1977 and from 1990 at the Mannes College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music.
Her fame came as much from her prestigious classical career, as much as from the fact that she was one of the few harpists to have also played jazz.
This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, Gloria Agostini - Wikipedia, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).