Parker Ramsay

HARP

Parker Ramsay is a versatile harpist known for his innovative approach to both modern and period harps. He has performed at prestigious venues like Alice Tully Hall and the Spoleto Festival USA. Praised for his recordings, Ramsay premieres new works and co-directs the period ensemble A Golden Wire.

Parker Ramsay has forged a career defying easy categorization. Equally at home on modern and period harps, he pursues his passions in tackling new and underperformed works and bringing his instrument to new audiences. Recent and upcoming performances include solo performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Phillips Collection, Cal Performances, Shriver Hall, IRCAM, King’s College, Cambridge, the Spoleto Festival USA, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. He has collaborated with ensembles such Mark Morris Dance Group, Latitude 49, Apollo’s Fire, the Van Kuijk Quartet and has undertaken residencies at the University of California, San Diego, Princeton University and IRCAM.

His 2020 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). In 2021, he premiered Omolu, a new work for amplified harp by Marcos Balter, commissioned by the Miller Theatre at Columbia University for their podcast series Mission: Commission. His last album, released in October 2022, features The Street, a new concert-length work for solo harp and text by Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman. In 2023, he made his debut in Paris with Josh Levine’s Anyway, a new work for harp and electronics commissioned by IRCAM. This year, he made his Baltimore debut with flutist Brandon Patrick George, and his Los Angeles and Bay Area debuts with Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman’s The Street at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA and Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley. Later this year, he will make his debut at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht performing Lucy McKnight’s when i am among the trees. His Canadian debut will be made premiering a new chamber concerto by Jared Miller at Latitude 49’s Sound Atlas Festival in Calgary, and his Dublin debut will include a new evening length work for harp and voice by Connor Way and Iarla Ó Lionáird. In 2025, he will premiere new works by Aida Shirazi and David Fulmer and undertake tours with the Van Kuijk Quartet, IRCAM and Mark Morris Dance Group.

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, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham Baroque and the Royal Academy of Music, London. As a writer, he has been published in VAN Magazine, Early Music America Magazine, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Raised in Tennessee, Parker began harp studies with his mother, Carol McClure. He served as organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge before pursuing graduate studies at Oberlin and Juilliard. In 2014, he was awarded First Prize at the Sweelinck International Organ Competition.