Tamsin Dearnley

Coming up!

Solo concert 28th Janury 2024 (live), plus I'll be guest appearing (online) at 'How to Harp' with a concert on the 11th of February and a workshop on composition on the 18th. Full details can be found by clicking the image below!

Tamsin Dearnley is a professional lever harpist, sound designer and award-winning composer and arranger.

"Full of energy on her strings, she is at one with her instrument, which she adapts to her interpretation of all her pieces, including her own contemporary and atonal compositions..."

As a child, Tamsin couldn't decide if she wanted to be a harpist, a trapeze artist or an expert on Japanese art. So she hedged her bets: six years of nagging persuaded her parents to let her have harp lessons; as a more rebellious eighteen-year-old she (politely) informed her parents she was taking up a year's place in a circus school before going to university to read Japanese.

Music, however, remained a constant, and she has since become a passionate advocate of the versatility of the lever harp. She has performed and taught in a variety of (mostly respectable) locations around the world.

When she was forced to stop playing the harp for several years due to injury, she turned to writing music instead of playing it, and (to her immense surprise) was accepted onto master's degree course to study composition at the University of Edinburgh under Nigel Osborne and was awarded a distinction.

She now divides her time between performing, teaching, composing, and creating weird and wonderful sound effects for museum installations and indie game designers.

And drinking tea.

Harpist & Harp Teacher
Composer & Arranger
Singer-Songwriter
Sound Designer