Harpist Terri Langerak details the atmosphere with her music. Playing to a roomful of caffeine-consuming listeners and readers Friday night in the cafe space at Borders, Fairview Heights, she utilized her slightly-amplified instrument's shimmers, glimmers, scintillations, and washing waves of sound to subtly suspend moving time.
In doing so she managed to create an authentic air of mystery.
As both of the harpist's hands are about the business of striking strings --neither one required in service to fingerboards, fretboards, or plectrums--the skilled performer will capitalize upon this manual mobility to embellish the sound with effects. In Langerak's case, the embellishments tend to be "sculptural" in nature. As you watch her hands move away from the plucked strings, they cup and tilt and turn--reinforced with considerable body-English--deflecting and caressing the sound waves as they undulate out into the room.
There is something ever-so-subtly magical taking place as she does this-an unmistakable transformation in which, as they say, "the singer becomes the song."
Which is a good thing, because "magic" has a lot to do with what this woman's music is about: a magic that magnifies moments, and their accompanying sensations, in time.
A case in point Friday night was "Tea Mind", from her most recent CD "Zen Breakfast". Against descending scales she spoke a few spare lines of verse that invoked images of a tea kettle, warmed water, and tea leaves. The song conveyed what seems to be a recurrent theme in her verses, the Zen-imperative to immerse oneself in the drama of the unfolding moment. As the piece progressed, Langerak launched into some of the evening's most vivid, jazz-style harp playing.
Although narrative threads run through her songs, their impact derives from this singer-songwriter's impressive command of powerful, sensorial images: the black feathers and blood of a crow fallen in the snow, a single leaf poised against a rock in the middle of a rushing stream, the sensation of a kiss.
Langerak's songs, while delightfully melodic, do not run especially circular courses. Rather, they meander according to the strictures of a musical navigation that is all her own. Although the melodies arrive back home, the courses they run are free ones that serve her verses wonderfully.
Her music, Friday night, demonstrated the power to cut through the percussion of banging baristas, the giggles of courting adolescents, and the pervading caffeine buzz of Borders, addressing itself to the hearts of Langerak's fascinated listeners.
Paul Harris - Prospect News, St. Louis, MO