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Los Angeles-based harpist Lily Press performs professionally in orchestras, chamber ensembles, solo recital venues, and for special events.
Lily Press has performed in a variety of venues, including Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Palais Corbelli in Vienna, the Providence Performing Arts Center, Sanders Theatre at Harvard and Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum. As a chamber musician, Lily is a co-founder of Strange Interlude with cellist Simon Linn-Gerstein. Founded in 2007, Strange Interlude’s performances combine Press and Linn-Gerstein’s love of chamber music with their passion for crafting non-traditional concert experiences that incorporate interactive conversation to bring the audience further inside the works they play and the technical, artistic and personal process of making a piece of music come alive.
As an orchestral performer and recording artist, Press has played with the Santa Monica Symphony, Paul Madore Chorale, The Legend of Zelda – Symphony of Goddesses, The Midnight Hour, and Danbury Symphony. Additionally, Press has recorded soundtracks for video games and TV shows including Final Fantasy XV and Little Witch Academia.
Press was also a co-founder of the SillyBird Contemporary Chamber Music Festival, which was created in 2012 with the goal of performing contemporary chamber music in relaxed and non-traditional settings. Lily has collaborated with a number of composers including consulting with Curt Cacioppo on his piece The Red Dove of Libya, premiering Paul Brust’s The Remembered Present with the Longy Conservatory Orchestra, performing the Viennese premiere of Max Wanderman’s Deutche Grammatik, and the premiere of Jared Hettrick’s Tales of Taliessen with the Latitude New Music Ensemble.
Lily received a B.A. in music from Haverford College where she graduated magna cum laude, presenting a lecture recital based on her thesis research of harp iconography and its influence on the instrument’s repertory and role in the world of classical music, and a Master of Music in Harp Performance from the Longy School of Music of Bard College, where she studied with Franziska Huhn.
Lily Press, harpist | Los Angeles | Weddings & events, solo, chamber, orchestral 