Bridget Kibbey, Harpist

According to The New York Times, harpist Bridget Kibbey “…makes it seems as though the instrument had been waiting all its life to explode with the energetic figures and gorgeous colors she was getting from it.”  Called the “Yo-Yo Ma of the harp,” by Vogue’s Senior Editor Corey Seymour, Bridget Kibbey is a winner of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, a Salon de Virtuosi SONY Recording Grant, an artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and winner of Premiere Prix at the Journées de les Harpes Competition in Arles, France. Ms. Kibbey has fast gained a reputation for her diverse, energetic programming that spans the baroque, French Masterworks, and rhythmic migration in South America.

Upcoming highlights include: Multiple tours of her own adaptations of J.S. Bach’s keyboard concerti alongside the Dover Quartet in the US and Canada, a ten-city duo collaboration with mandolinist Avi Avital, and various solo recitals around the United States.  She premieres a new harp concerto with four American Orchestras – written by composer João Luiz Rezende – exploring the evolution of Brazilian popular dance forms on the harp, alongside her own Bach transcriptions with string orchestra, starting with the Orlando Philharmonic, paired with Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in F Minor. She returns to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner, presenting French Masterworks by Debussy, Ravel, and Caplet.

Ms. Kibbey has toured and recorded with luminaries Placido Domingo, Dawn Upshaw, and Gustavo Santaollalo for SONY Records and Deutsche Grammaphon; and, her own debut album, Love is Come Again, was named one of the Top Ten Releases by Time Out New York. Ms. Kibbey’s solo performances have been broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today, New York’s WQXR, WNYC’s Soundcheck, WETA’s Front Row Washington, WRTI’s Crossover, and on television in A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts. Most recently she was named “Best in Studio 2018” by WQXR for her performance of her own adaptation of J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, live on air.

Ms. Kibbey appears frequently as soloist and chamber musician at festivals and series across the globe, including Schloss Elmau, Pelotas Festival, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart, Aspen, Bravo!Vail, Santa Fe, Spoleto, Big Ears Knoxville, Chamber Music Northwest, Bridgehampton, Bay Chamber, Savannah Music Festival, and Music@Menlo.

bridgetkibbey.com
Photo credit: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco