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Award-winning musician Sage Po, 15, plays the harp at her Camptonville home.
For two hours each day, Sage Po, 15, can be found playing the harp with callused fingertips in her two-story, clubhouse-style bedroom on her parents’ wooded, 50-acre property in Camptonville.
“I love listening to her,” said her mother, Janie Kesselman, who regularly sits in her daughter’s small cabin during a practice.
Po is gaining recognition locally and nationwide for her talents as a classical harpist.
At the Music in the Mountains Young Musicians Competition May 3, Po received the Jean Brook Dunning Award and a $550 scholarship, taking first place in her division and best overall performance.
Also recently, Po received the Jack Kent Cooke Award for young musicians and a $10,000 grant for continuing her musical studies. Last year, Po received $40,000 to further her musical education.
She hopes to become a harp teacher some day.
“I think, harp music in general, people are pretty awed by it,” Po said.
Po also is one of 20 highly motivated students enrolled in the Young Composers Program offered by Music in the Mountains. The students will give a concert on June 7.
In June, she will travel to El Paso to tape a spot on the radio show ‘From the Top.” It airs every Sunday on Capital Public Radio KXPR 88.9 FM and will feature Po in October.
Later this summer, Po will perform during the American Harp Society’s national competition in Salt Lake City.
Then she will travel to France for three weeks to study with harp teachers there.
Po attributes her successes to her teachers, supportive parents and alternative upbringing. Mostly home schooled since she was a young girl, Po grew up in a forested setting and chose what she spent her time on and when.
Her parents, Janie Kesselman and Peter Galbraith, both former refrigerator mechanics who worked in the Bay Area, moved to the hills 20 years ago and began selling handcrafted rope sandals.
The couple raised their two daughters in a commune, surrounded by different adults and children who also lived on the property. Po was born in a yurt and grew up listening to her mom play guitar around the campfire.
Her parents gave their daughters the last name “Po” after the Miwok word for otter, to avoid a cumbersome hyphenated name.
Though other families no longer share the property, a hodgepodge of lodgings remains, sprouting from the forest floor.
A trailer serves as a kitchen and dining room, and an array of solar panels supplies electricity year round.
“I love listening to her,” said her mother, Janie Kesselman, who regularly sits in her daughter’s small cabin during a practice.
Po is gaining recognition locally and nationwide for her talents as a classical harpist.
At the Music in the Mountains Young Musicians Competition May 3, Po received the Jean Brook Dunning Award and a $550 scholarship, taking first place in her division and best overall performance.
Also recently, Po received the Jack Kent Cooke Award for young musicians and a $10,000 grant for continuing her musical studies. Last year, Po received $40,000 to further her musical education.
She hopes to become a harp teacher some day.
“I think, harp music in general, people are pretty awed by it,” Po said.
Po also is one of 20 highly motivated students enrolled in the Young Composers Program offered by Music in the Mountains. The students will give a concert on June 7.
In June, she will travel to El Paso to tape a spot on the radio show ‘From the Top.” It airs every Sunday on Capital Public Radio KXPR 88.9 FM and will feature Po in October.
Later this summer, Po will perform during the American Harp Society’s national competition in Salt Lake City.
Then she will travel to France for three weeks to study with harp teachers there.
Po attributes her successes to her teachers, supportive parents and alternative upbringing. Mostly home schooled since she was a young girl, Po grew up in a forested setting and chose what she spent her time on and when.
Her parents, Janie Kesselman and Peter Galbraith, both former refrigerator mechanics who worked in the Bay Area, moved to the hills 20 years ago and began selling handcrafted rope sandals.
The couple raised their two daughters in a commune, surrounded by different adults and children who also lived on the property. Po was born in a yurt and grew up listening to her mom play guitar around the campfire.
Her parents gave their daughters the last name “Po” after the Miwok word for otter, to avoid a cumbersome hyphenated name.
Though other families no longer share the property, a hodgepodge of lodgings remains, sprouting from the forest floor.
A trailer serves as a kitchen and dining room, and an array of solar panels supplies electricity year round.
Passion found
An 8-year-old Po fell in love with the harp when she heard local teacher Lisa Stine playing the instrument at a Christmas party. Two weeks later, she was taking lessons.“I really liked it. I never wanted to stop,” Po said. “It’s definitely my instrument.”
Stine has taught many young harpists in Nevada County, including Indie folk musician Joanna Newsom, who has influenced Po.
“I saw her in concert at St. Joseph’s. She was pretty inspiring,” Po said.
A small Celtic harp from Ebay served Po’s needs for a time.
Two years ago in August, an inheritance left by her uncle was used to buy a mahogany Italian Salvi Sinfonietta pedal harp she calls “Georgia.”
Po played the harp to Kesselman’s brother as he was dying of cancer.
“He was a musician, too,” Kesselman said.
To protect Georgia during trips in the back of her parents’ pickup truck, Po’s father designed a protective bed for the harp out of a futon frame. A mechanic to the core, Galbraith also rigged up humidity and temperature monitors in Po’s unconventional bedroom to protect the expensive instrument.
While she wears her long, wavy hair in a classical look twisted behind her head, the rest of her appears like any other adolescent girl in jeans and a casual tank.
As she walked barefoot on an earthen path to a sunny garden patch, she talked about how all music genres have influenced her.
“I’ll listen to punk rock and metal. I hold to the fact that music is organized sound. That could be (banging on) rocks. I don’t care.”
ooo
To contact Staff Writer Laura Brown, e-mail lbrown@theunion.com or call 477-4231.
