Marta Cook’s singular approach to the harp has brought her music to audiences throughout Europe and North America. Highlights include the World Harp Congress (Vancouver,) the North Atlantic Fiddle Conference (Limerick,) Spoleto Festival USA (Charleston), Pritzker Pavilion (Chicago), Espace Culturel Bertin Poirée (Paris), The Irish Centre (Leeds), and New York Live Arts (Manhattan.) In 2020, Marta was the sole harper among forty outstanding artists commissioned by The Embassy of Ireland, USA to produce work for Shades of Green - A Celebration of Irish Arts in America. 

Having been fortunate to learn as a teenager from Máire Ní Chathasaigh, the great innovator of modern Irish harping, Marta has continued to develop techniques to advance the stylistic development of the harp as a solo instrument in traditional music. Her playing is further influenced by great musicians of Zhigaagoong/Chicago past and present; recordings of the cylinder and 78 RPM eras; and Ann Heymann’s re-creation of the Gaelic harp. 

Marta studied musicology at the University of Chicago and holds an honors degree in harp performance from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, where she studied with the legendary orchestral harpist Sarah Bullen. Since then, Marta has worked as a composer, arranger, improvisor, and studio musician, appearing on a variety of albums (including Yo-Yo Ma's GRAMMY ® - award-winning Songs of Joy and Peace.) She is widely recognized as a versatile accompanist on both harp and piano. Her collaboration with Ann Heymann, The Monarch Cycle, was featured as North America’s contribution to Harp Ireland’s Lá na Cruite | Harp Day Gala Concert in 2021, at which time she was interviewed as part of the “Humans of the Harp” series.

An exceptional teacher of all ages and abilities, Marta works with students across the US, Canada and Ireland. She is affiliated with the Shepherd School of Irish Music and serves as a master teaching artist for the Ohio Arts Council’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program. Her most recent work combines performance with research and writing on historical and political contexts that illuminate contemporary experiences of traditional music. Her article “Subjects of Tradition: Cultural Construction and Irish Comprador Capitalism” appears in the Irish Studies Review February 2024 special issue on Irish capitalism, edited by Aidan Beatty and Conor McCabe.

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Jenny Picking Cockles (Reel)

A tune learned from the playing of Néillidh Boyle, as recorded in 1953 by Peter Kennedy - with a few ideas from John Kelly Sr., Willie Clancy, and of course my own. Recorded for the North Atlantic Fiddle Conference, hosted by the University of Limerick, 2021.; also presented at the Ward Irish Music Archives conference, Archiving Irish America: Music, Dance, and Culture, April 2024.

The images are a photo essay on Irish music in a diasporic context. It includes images from the World's Fair; excerpts from the letters of Irish public figures; old newspaper articles; advertisements; images of the city, past and present; and photographs of musicians. 

The tune is named for Kean Ó Hara, the scion of a Sligo landholding family who served as High Sheriff of Sligo in 1708. learned this version from Máire Ní Chathasaigh. The second tune is a well-known reel called The Heather Breeze that I associate with the wonderful fiddle playing of Dublin fiddler, long resident in Miami, James Kelly.

The Merry Sisters of Fate (Reel)

Inspired particularly by the piping of Séamus Ennis, this is a special performance commissioned by the Embassy and Consulates of Ireland in 2020. The tune was recorded by a Meath fiddler with Donegal roots, Frank O’Higgins, in 1937, as well as by Donegal fiddle legend John Doherty.

For this video, I collaborated with Dublin visual designer Deirdre Molloy to create a visual setting. The Sisters of the title are likely to be the Fates of Greek myth, but we chose to reference to the ancient tripartite goddess of war, fate, and prophecy, the Mórrigan. Our design is inspired by the three poems she speaks at the end of the Cath Maige Tuired, depicting a battle and two wildly divergent prophecies that I take as a reference to a multiverse of outcomes.

Marta’s Musings (Jig)

A beautiful jig by Marty Fahey. For Lá na Cruite | Harp Day 2023, Marty and I collaborated on a blog post sharing the amazing story that we uncovered - a project that led him to compose this tune. Marty writes,

As this tune started to emerge, I had two reactions to it: 1) that it had an understated lyricism/ happiness about it and 2) that I imagined the resonance of harp playing as a way to showcase it the best. Having arrived at those conclusions, it was only natural to dedicate it to Marta who had, over the past couple of years, helped me with a couple of musical videos and was also my "fellow detective" in getting to the bottom of a mystery that prevailed on one of the more important "harping" paintings in the canon of Irish art, James Christopher Timbrell's, Carolan, The Irish Bard, c 1843-1844. Thank you, Marty!

Excerpt from Bach: Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001: II. Fuga

This short sample is designed to show my levering technique using Truitt levers. The piece shown is an excerpt from my note-for-note transcription of the violin score for lever harp. A version of this piece is familiar to pedal harpists as the wonderful Etude No. 2 from the Bach-Grandjany Etudes, based on BWV 539, Bach’s arrangement of the fugue for organ. Having played that for a number of years, I was inspired by violinist Viktoria Mullova’s stunning interpretation to try the original version.  To me, the sonority of the lever harp is better suited stylistically to this approach.

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