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Concerts and live tours are back, and there was a duo CD with guitarist Clovis Phillips out in 2022.
Harriet has recently been recording some music videos with film-maker Juliette Daum. Here's a taster:
Scroll down to view other videos and to read more about Harriet.
About
Harriet started the harp aged 7 and was classically trained, reaching Grade 8 with Distinction on concert pedal harp back in 1997.
Asked to join a London-Irish band in her gap year, she had a religious conversion to trad music and has never looked back since.
She is now considered one of the foremost exponents of the Celtic harp in the UK, specialising in Welsh, Irish and Scottish music.
With her trio of harp, bass and drums she also mixes Celtic music with jazz - and more recently with tap dance.
Together with her love of Celtic music, Harriet speaks Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic and has an MA in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Studies from Trinity College, Cambridge (1998-2001).
She has been a busy full-time musician since 2001, touring extensively throughout the UK, Europe, Canada and America.
She was the 'Harper of All Britain' (at the All Britain round of the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉirinn) in 2000 and won it again in 2002.
She has been on 18 tours of the USA to 25 different states as well as giving regular tours in France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Ireland and Italy. Before the pandemic she was collaborating with several Irish bands in Germany which led to 11 tours of Germany during 2019 alone. She will be back playing and teaching at the Harfentage Harp Festival in Germany in April 2025.
In 2007 she performed as a soloist to 25,000 people in the 02 Arena and in the Royal Albert Hall in London as part of the "Young Voices" Tour. She was also chosen as one of 6 winners of the "Danny Kyle Open Stage Award" at the Celtic Connections Festival 2007 - picked out from among 82 different musical acts competing for the title.
With her trio she has represented Wales in the Festival Interceltique in Lorient and in the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow (2008) as well as performing and teaching at most major harp festivals including the Bardonecchia Harp Festival in Italy in 2014, the Harfentreffen Festival (2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016) in Germany, the Harfentage Festival in Germany (2014-present) and Dinan Harp Festival in Brittany (2015). She was also asked to perform at the World Harp Congress in Cardiff 2022.
Harriet's first solo album "Jumping Ahead" of Irish and Scottish harp music with backing from traditional and world music instruments was launched in London in 2003.
Her second album "From the Crooked Tree" (2007) with The Harriet Earis Trio (harp, bass and drums) combined Celtic harp with jazz backing and was described as “superlative” by the Musician’s Union magazine.
The 2nd trio album "Alignments" came out in May 2016 and Radio Wales presenter Frank Hennessey commented that the CD made him feel so good that “The Harriet Earis Trio should be available on the N.H.S.".
A new duo album "Plethiad" with guitarist Clovis Phillips was released in 2022.
Harriet has also guested extensively on different albums since 1998 including the debut album from London-Irish group Siansa's(2001), two CDs "Through These Eyes" and "A Hundred Thousand Angels" by pop singer Luce Drayton (1999 and 2000) and an album by Welsh pop singer Elin Fflur (2004). She guested on the album "Shake the Blossom Early" by London-Irish singer Helen Roche (2004) and on the album 'Craic of Dawn' by the German-Irish band An Tor (2006) and on "Ear to Ere", an American/Welsh cross-over album produced by Red Kite Records (2007). She has also recorded an album "Dragons" with Welsh trio Triban (with singer Ian Rowlands and fiddler Jasper Salmon) (2007) and an album of Christmas music "Winter Songs" with singer Sharron Kraus (2010).
Harriet has always been interested to use her music to help people. In 2005 Harriet was one of a few young musicians in the UK to be awarded a place on Yehudi Menuhin’s Live Music Now! scheme, which led to over 150 solo concerts in community venues such as hospitals, old people’s homes and special schools (as well as solo recitals in most of the main Welsh festivals, such as the North Wales Music Festival in St Asaph, Bryn Terfel’s “Y Faenol” Festival and the National Eisteddfod). Since leaving the scheme as a performer in 2009 she became one of a handful of musicians in the UK trained to help audition and mentor new musicians on the scheme. Her work with Live Music Now! led to an invitation to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen at a reception honouring “Young People in the Performing Arts” in May 2011.
She has made regular radio and TV appearances (in most of the Celtic languages!) for BBC Northern Ireland, Radio Wales, Radio na Gaeltachta, Radio nan Gaidheal, BBC Alba, ITV Wales and S4C.
When she is not touring, Harriet lives in an off-grid house in mid Wales and teaches online harp lessons to all ages - from age 5 to 101! - with Skype pupils as far afield as Australia, France, Greece, Germany, Gibraltar, Canada, Hong Kong and the US, as well as all across the UK. She teaches harp lessons weekly through the medium of French and German as well as English, Welsh or Irish.
When she is not playing the harp or teaching music, she also runs “About Welsh” courses and workshops, where she gives an overview of Welsh literature from earliest times to the present and compares Welsh with other European languages.
You can view Harriet's latest YouTube music videos by film maker Juliette Daum here: