Tasha Smith Godinez: A NEW DAY
21st June 2024
San Diego musician, mentor and trailblazer, Tasha Smith Godinez delivers A NEW DAY on Celtic and electric harps.
“… athletic excursions…. penchant for the avant garde” ***** 5-star review BBC Music Magazine
“The inherently transcendental sound of virtuoso Tasha Smith Godinez’s harp… fascinating and evocative” Songlines*
“… a champion for the harp”* The Alternative 9 Review
“… unforgettable sound…”JazzQuad
“She is constantly looking for the limits that her instrument seems to impose, and she tries again and again to assign a new sound and new sounds to the repertoire for the harp.” Rootstime
There are harp players, composers and then there’s trailblazers: musicians whose entire career centres around the instrument they love, taking their work to a whole new level. Such is the case for San Diego harpist, Tasha Smith Godinez, whose life and career centres around the harp. As the director of the San Diego Harp Academy, Tasha teaches and mentors the harp and as the founder of Ennanga Records & Publishing, Tasha composes, records and arranges harp music with an edge.
A NEW DAY is a collection of nine original compositions by Tasha Smith Godinez brought to life by two harps, viola, bass, percussion and a dash of vocals. On A NEW DAY, Tasha includes new techniques on both the Celtic and electric harps as she journeys into a jazz-world music fusion. As Tasha Smith Godinez explains,
“The blend of the electric and acoustic harp sounds brings new life to the harp augmenting the instrument’s sonic possibilities and expanding the horizon of harp music.”
Tasha Smith Godinez incorporates traditional harp plucking with various other techniques and instruments at the same time. These include mallets on the strings and soundboard of the electric harp, the use of stomp pedals on both harps for various effects, a variety of cymbals, chimes and percussive cymbals called crotales and using the soundboard as an occasional drum.
Tasha Smith Godinez delights in stretching her limits as a harp performer and is joined on A NEW DAY by viola and electric bass player, Domenico Hueso and masterful percussionist, Christopher Garcia who proves the rightness of ‘less is more’ throughout the album. Before going into the studio to start recording A NEW DAY, Tasha learnt how to play both the Celtic and electric harps simultaneously which she accomplishes on ‘The Word Began His Work’ and ‘The Least of These’.
On the album’s title track ‘A New Day’ Tasha adds a reverb stomp pedal to accompany her performance on the electro-acoustic pedal harp. While playing the strings, she drags a rubber mallet down the length of the bass strings, causing the strings to resonate in harmonics for the eery sound heard throughout the introduction. The effect creates an other-worldly sound - like that of the darkness before dawn. ‘A New Day’ begins with a melancholy sadness and transitions to a lively, Brazilian Baiao-inspired rhythm full of hope and exuberance.
The memorable opening track ‘Passion Flower’ was inspired by Tasha encountering this exquisite vine for the first-time during travels through the French town of Perpignan. Tasha was so taken by the flower’s strength and exquisite blossoms, that she composed this piece about it and since this time, the passion flower vine has taken pride of place in Tasha’s home garden.
‘Synergy’ is a pivotal track on the album marking considerable growth for Tasha Smith Godinez as a composer of solo harp music. It is dedicated to Tasha’s mentor and musical partner for many years, Christopher Garcia and was specifically written for the new and special electro-acoustic pedal harp. ‘Synergy’ combines stomp pedal sounds, cymbals, and chimes – all played by the harpist.
‘Look Up’ and ‘Love Is’ are the two compositions with vocals on the album. ‘Look Up’ is a spirited song sung by American musical theatre star singer, Leonard Patton, who has featured in a stream of highly successful musical theatre productions including San Diego’s longest running original musical, MIXTAPE.
The track ‘Love Is’ grew from Tasha asking friends, family and fellow musicians the simple question, and building the song around their answers, which were often sent on mobile phones. Tasha Smith Godinez loves the spontaneity of the recording as on ‘Love Is’, completely improvised for both the vocalist and harpist.
A NEW DAY was inspired by Tasha’s love of the Celtic harp, nature, family and faith, all with a wider context of the world as it is unfolding today as Tasha explains,
“A NEW DAY is a musical reflection of the world in its current state, my hope for the future and an appreciation for the beauty of creation both in humanity and nature. All the music is inspired by very personal experiences, the people in my life and my faith. When you hear A NEW DAY from start to finish, you’ll hear jazz, world, a little blues and a touch of the avant- garde.”
A NEW DAY is Tasha Smith Godinez’ sixth studio album and was recorded between February and March 2024 at Studio West in San Diego, California. The album is being released through Ennanga Records & Publishing, the vehicle through which Tasha releases original harp compositions for both pedal and lever harps, arrangements by American composers, and recordings of contemporary harp music. It follows on from ‘Postcards From The Soul’ (Ennanga Records, 2014), In The Village Of Hope (Cold Blue label, 2015), HarpCHICK (Ennanga Records, 2020), Metamorphoses (Centaur Records, 2022) and Out Of The Desert (Ennanga Records, 2022).