A Job That Takes a Bit of Pluck

There are moments during the performance of a symphony when the percussive intensity of the tympanies surges with the woodwinds, brass and strings to envelop harpist Mindy Ball in an epiphany of sound, a transcendent experience.

But getting to that moment is the hard part for Ball, 34, principal harpist with the Pacific Symphony, who confesses to a love-hate relationship with her 6-foot-tall, 90-pound instrument.

“We have a saying that if harps are in heaven, then heaven must be hell,” Ball said. “When you’re a harpist, everything in your life revolves around the harp: what kind of car you drive, what kind of house you buy. It’s awkward to move, and it doesn’t fold up.”

Even her 3-year-old marriage to Pacific Symphony property master Robert Stewart was harp-inspired.

“I met him on the loading dock. He’s 6 feet 7 inches tall, and I needed someone to bring my harp up the steps, and there he was.”

Then there’s the matter of keeping a temperature-sensitive instrument with 47 strings in tune.

“Harpists spend half their life tuning, and half their life playing out of tune,” Ball said.

While the average music student can venture in and out of guitar, saxophone and violin lessons with relative ease, the choice of harp should not be undertaken lightly, Ball warns. Her 1979 Lyon & Healy concert grand harp cost $30,000--and it is just one of three she owns. Ball can fit two of them into her 1987 Volvo station wagon.

Harp students and parents unwilling to commit to the minimum $5,000 price of a beginner’s model can rent a harp for about $200 a month. The highly specialized lessons cost between $50 and $100 an hour, compared to $15 an hour for guitar lessons. A new set of harp strings sells for $500.

The expense was reason enough for Ball’s father and mother--choral director and organist, respectively, at the First Presbyterian Church in Orange for 30 years--to express reservations about her sudden infatuation with the harp at age 8.

“With my dad being a choral conductor at the church, at Christmastime he hired a harpist to come in and perform in a work for harp and choir,” Ball said. “I walked into the church one day after school and saw the harp sitting up in the chancel area. I took one look at it, ran out of the church up to my dad’s office and said, ‘Papa, Papa, Papa! I have to have one!’

“To which he said I should probably stick with the piano for a while.”

But the congregation loved the sound of harp and choir, prompting her father to bring the harpist back each Christmas.

“It was always put back into my mind that way--that this was really what I wanted to do. Even though I hadn’t touched the instrument--I knew nothing about it--I just looked at it and I just knew that was what I wanted to do.”

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By age 14, Ball’s parents relented and she switched from piano to harp.

She soon began performing with university-affiliated youth orchestras, becoming principal harpist with the Pacific Symphony by age 18. She has been principal harpist for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for the past year.

Ball’s passion for performance helps her cope with a career in which exacting standards and erratic earnings can be overwhelming. Pacific Symphony orchestra members are not salaried and do not receive benefits or paid vacation like musicians in more established orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but are paid for performances and rehearsals.

Some orchestra members, Ball among them, supplement their incomes with studio recordings and lessons, even hiring out for weddings and private parties.

“The burnout level is pretty high among musicians. You can end up doing so much all the time that you don’t realize you’re getting more and more exhausted. It becomes an awful lot of very intense, very focused work.”

Her work fills so much of her life, in fact, that Ball spends little of her free time listening to music.

“When I’m done with a performance, I find myself driving home on the freeway and still counting measures. If I’m listening to any type of music, no matter if it’s classical or rock ‘n’ roll, I’m still counting. I immediately pick up the beat, I know what the time signature is and I’m counting again. Before I know it, I’m counting measure 67, measure 68. . . .

“To turn that intensity off, which can be both mentally and physically draining, talk radio is fine with me.”

For all the discipline that classical music requires of performers, Ball is troubled by signs of a decreasing public interest in that type of music.

“It’s harder to sell tickets every year. It’s harder to program music that the audience will find stimulating and exciting. You have so many great composers who are living today whose music is not played.

“When people hear of some modern composer whose music is going to be played, they won’t show up, because they are afraid it’s too obscure and too abstract. But some of this music is just fantastic.

“There’s nothing quite like looking out at an audience when you’re onstage, especially here in this 3,000-seat theater, and seeing 1,500 empty seats. That’s pretty depressing.”

And among those who do show up, concert decorum is not always followed.

“There are moments when the music is just so delicate, so fragile that even someone coughing or sneezing can really ruin the moment,” she said. “In the winter months, we have a louder audience than normal. They’re all coughing and sneezing and blowing their noses.”

But Ball is forgiving of Orange County audiences who sometimes forget they’re not supposed to clap between movements.

“If an audience is so moved emotionally that they feel the need to respond to what they’ve just heard by applauding, I think that’s terrific. What better compliment could an orchestra receive than having an audience show their emotions?”

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Profile: Mindy Ball

Age: 34

Hometown: Decatur, Ill.

Residence: Garden Grove

Came to Orange County: 1966

Family: Husband, Robert Stewart, is Pacific Symphony property master

Education: Bachelor’s degree in music and harp from Chapman University

Background: Joined Pacific Symphony as principal harpist in 1980 at age 18; on faculty at Chapman and Biola universities; principal harpist with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; studio musician for television and commercials

Epiphany: “I don’t think you can get up and play music without being very vulnerable. You’re letting your inner emotions show, and when you lay that out in front of everyone to see, that can be a very passionate experience.”

Source: Mindy Ball; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times