Parker Ramsay

HARP

Equally at home on modern and period harps, Parker Ramsay is dedicated to invigorating the existing canon while delving into new and underperformed works. Recent and forthcoming highlights include his Lincoln Center debut; the world premieres of Marcos Balter’s Omolu and Nico Muhly’s The Street; and a residency at IRCAM in Paris. He is also co-director of period-instrument ensemble A Golden Wire.

Parker Ramsay is a performer, writer and public speaker. Equally at home on modern and period harps, he spends his time tackling new and underperformed works and bringing the instrument to new audiences.

He has collaborated with Marcos Balter, Nico Muhly and Josh Levine, with commissions and premieres at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Phillips Collection, the Spoleto Festival USA, IRCAM, the Princeton Sound Kitchen, King’s College, Cambridge and the Canada Council for the Arts. Forthcoming projects include collaborations with Sarah Kirkland Snider, Jared Miller, Aida Shirazi and inti-figgis vizueta.

Alongside gambist Arnie Tanimoto, Parker is co-director of A Golden Wire, a period instrument ensemble based in New York. He has presented talks, performances and lectures on period instruments at the Smithsonian Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has been published in VAN Magazine, Early Music America Magazine, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

In 2020, his recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations was praised as “remarkably special” (Gramophone), “nuanced and insightful” (BBC Music Magazine), “relentlessly beautiful” (WQXR), and “marked by a keen musical intelligence” (Wall Street Journal). His next album is set for release in October 2022, featuring The Street by Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman.

Raised in Tennessee, Parker began harp studies with his mother, Carol McClure. He holds degrees from Cambridge, Oberlin and Juilliard. He lives in New York City.