International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Thought

Dr. Cheryl Ann Fulton

Recognized as a leading pioneer in the field of historical harps and a popular performer and teacher of Celtic lever harps, Dr. Cheryl Ann Fulton has had a successful, international performing, recording, teaching and scholarly research career since 1984. She earned a BS degree in pedal harp, and an MM and DM in early music/historical harp from the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University, Bloomington. During her graduate work at Indiana University she was a dedicated student of Thomas Binkley, and served as Associate Instructor of Historical Harp. In 1987 she received a Fulbright award for research and performance in Lisbon, Portugal and while there became principal harpist for the Orchestre Gulbenkian. Her solo recital performed at the John F. Kennedy Center featured five historical harps on one program of which the Washington Post said, "Fulton drew from all of them a serene and delicate sound.... remarkable instruments which Fulton played with total skill and reverent affection."

Dr. Fulton is a contributing scholar for the latest edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and authored a chapter for A Performers Guide to Medieval Music (IU Press, 2000). She was awarded the Burton E. Adams Prize for Academic Research for her doctoral thesis on the history of the triple harp.

Recent performances in the summer of 2012 included the Handel Harp Concerto with the Carmel Bach Festival and featured soloist for the 50th Annual Conference of the American Harp Society in NYC. She has performed and recorded with many distinguished early music ensembles including Ensemble Alcatraz, The Galax Quartet, Anonymous 4, Sequentia, American Bach Soloists, American Baroque, The Boston Camerata, and Chanticleer. She has been on the faculty for the Amherst Early Music workshops for over twenty-five years and was the first Director of the San Francisco Early Music Society Medieval Music Workshop. She is the founding President of the Historical Harp Society.

Known for her exceptional artistry, she is a highly sought after teacher of her masterful and expressive Touch & Tone Harp Technique and has a private studio in her San Francisco Bay Area home. She is also on the faculty of The Thornton School of Music at USC and teaches via Skype. When she is not harping she is playing with and training her Belgian Tervuren dogs or out riding her two Arabian horses on the trails in the East Bay hills.

Therese Honey

Therese Honey was inspired to pursue performing Medieval and Renaissance music after attending Historical Harp Society Conferences where she took workshop classes with Cheryl Ann Fulton and heard early music played on reproductions of historical harps. She draws her repertoire from many sources, including the music of Hildegard von Bingen, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Llibre Vermell, the Faenza Codex, and Renaissance vocal and dance music. She also plays continuo with Baroque ensembles. Her performances utilize historical harps appropriate to the music and bring her performances to life with anecdotal and humorous stories, garnered from her vast knowledge of harp lore and legend.

Therese presents solo concerts of Medieval and Renaissance music on historical harps, as well as traditional Celtic harp music on lever harp. She performs & records with the Texas Early Music Project in Austin, Texas, Utopia Early Music in Salt Lake City, and tours with Istanpitta. In addition to performing as guest artist on recordings with various ensembles, Therese's solo recordings appear on Waterbug Records

Ms. Honey tours throughout the US as a clinician and adjudicator. She has an active teaching studio in the Houston area, is a registered Suzuki harp teacher and is the co-director of the annual Houston Baptist University Summer Harp Festival. She teaches workshops on Medieval, Renaissance and Celtic repertoire, arranging and style, and harp ensemble, as well as such practical matters as harp purchase and maintenance, technique and posture, and performance attitude and preparation.