The Dallas College Brookhaven Campus Harp Ensemble will have its first Harp Coffee Concert at 12:30-2 p.m. Oct. 29 in the Performance Hall Lobby. The Harp Coffee Concert is a combination of fan favorite pick-me-ups with splashes of serene sounds where students, staff and faculty will be able to grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the harp ensemble.

The Dallas College Harp Ensemble is home to nine harpists.  Professor and professional harpist Cindy Horstman leads the ensemble with a predominantly jazz style of harp. Her expertise, combined with student testimonies, generates excitement for their upcoming concert.

Horstman has been a professional harpist for almost 40 years. Though she is classically trained, her specialty is jazz. What she has done in her ensemble is a little different than other college harp ensembles, as she’ll have students write their own pieces, and teaches them to improvise.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Horstman said. “The students really embrace it and I encourage them. It’s just a lot of fun and that also reflects on our performances. We’re doing a lot of writing and arranging for our ensemble. We’ll do a couple of my pieces and a couple of the students have been arranging as well.”

 Many of Horstman’s students are classically trained, but embrace her ways with jazz as well as improvising, which she focuses on in class.

Tenesa Rasmussen, a student harpist, is a classically trained musician, who has played the harp for several years. Jazz is a whole different ball game and it’s really fun,” Rasmussen said, “She makes it fun and educational at the same time.”

Rasmussen said she met Horstman at Collin College and followed her to Dallas College. She said she loves the ensemble, and it gives her motivation to keep playing and practicing.

“It’s a fun sound,” said Carla Siegesmund, a student. “The appealing tunes and rhythms and jazz-y, so I get the jazz experience with Cindy and the opportunity to collaborate with other musicians.”

Siegesmund is also a classically trained piano player who worked her way up from a lever harp until she was able to get a pedal harp and pursue this chapter in her musical story. She said she loves the fellowship that comes along with the ensemble.

“The camaraderie among the group is lovely,” Rasmussen said. “We support each other and absolutely enjoy playing together.”

The ensemble performs concerts each year, but Horstman and her students looks forward to these informal concert types for the students and communities. Horstman’s particular take on the jazz aspect of the usually classical instrument brings out a certain uniqueness that most do not see in a harp context.

“We’ve experimented with doing formal concerts in the big theater,” Horstman said. “We enjoy it [coffee concert]; it’s a little more casual than a formal concert, and Jazz is certainly not as formal as classical music, so it just fits the programming much better.”

Horstman and her students said they were enthusiastic to play for the community with the success of previous concerts. “Because of the uniqueness of a harp ensemble we really like to do outreach so that a lot of students can hear us and see that this actually exists because it’s a very unusual ensemble,” Horstman said.

Horstman said other professors bring their music appreciation students, while students walking by will stop and listen.

 “We enjoy sharing the harp music with other students and friends, because the harp is such a unique instrument, people don’t know much about it and it sounds so beautiful,” Rasmussen said.

With the coffee concert, they are able to simultaneously practice in many different aspects, apply class knowledge and showcase their skills and written pieces.

Some of the pieces they will be performing will be some of Horstman’s arrangements, such as “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” which premiered this year at the Harvard Worship Conference. Another, described as an early Christmas, will be “I Wonder as I Wander,” which will allow some students to showcase improvisation.

“How often do you see nine harps, playing together?” Horstman said. “We have a lot of success with attendance at the coffee concert. They’re a little more informal, but they’re better for students to know that we’re there.”