Arriving just one year after her 2021 acclaimed duet album with daughter Josefine Opsahl, The Infinite between Us, Celtic harpist “par excellence” Trine Opsahl has recorded her most serene, calming, and heartfelt album to date, The Moon Stays Bright. The album features three improvised pieces (“Moonscapes I,” “II,” and “III”) as well as three tracks with her daughter and renowned cellist, Josefine Opsahl.
Press release by LAZZ Promotions
Two of these tracks were recorded as both solo harp and duets (the duets are markedly different from the solo pieces). As usual, Trine’s harp playing is the epitome of a combination of exquisite artistry, amazing technique, and a deeply intimate connection with the listener through her heartfelt melodies.
TRINE OPSAHL
Whether performing on stage or within the Danish health care system, Celtic harpist Trine Opsahl is completely committed to embracing the special musical, tonal, and healing qualities of her instrument. “While playing the Celtic harp, I travel through a place of immense beauty and silence… a blissful journey through eternity.”
Born in 1965 in Norway, her family moved to Denmark when Trine was six. Early on, she discovered her personal goal. “I always wanted to make a difference…to do something valuable to help this world becoming a better place. I wanted to play music or become a doctor. What I do today seems to be a perfect combination of these ambitions: Using music to bring comfort, peace and relaxation to people in physical and emotional pain.”
By 11, Trine knew music was vitally important to her, but her first career ended up being in law as an attorney for the Danish justice department. A series of life-changing events led her to discover the music thanatologist (a therapist playing prescriptive harp music at the bedside for the dying) Therese Schroeder-Sheker. The use of music as a force for healing and bringing peace and serenity to those in need resonated with Trine who decided it was time for a change. Leaving her law career, she fulfilled her soul’s ambition to become a full-time musician on the Celtic harp. Almost immediately, she began playing her own compositions and, at that point, she realized she had, indeed, come home to her life’s true purpose. Trine’s experience as a therapeutic harpist began in 2009, the year she graduated from IHTP (The International Harp Therapy Programme), graduating as a Certified Therapeutic Harp Practitioner. Since then, Trine has played at the bedside of thousands of terminally ill and dying people and their relatives, to ease this most difficult of passages for both the patient and their loved ones.
“The harp, with its soothing timbre and spiritual associations, has been revered as a healing instrument by many cultures for thousands of years.” Trine has been featured on Danish television and in various publications, as well as giving lectures on harp therapy and her work in palliative care in Danish hospices.
Her self-composed solo albums include The Journey and the Dream (2005), Somewhere In A Hidden Memory (2012), Add Colours To My Sunset Sky (2017) and her brand new album The Moon Stays Bright (2021). She has three collaborations with daughter/cellist Josefine Opsahl: Leaving My Silent Empty House (2008), Unbroken Dreams (2015) and The Infinite between Us (2021). Her albums have received worldwide acclaim including nominations in numerous categories at the annual Zone Music Reporter music awards. The Infinite Between Us, Add Colours To My Sunset Sky and Unbroken Dreams all received international recognition, winning Global Music Awards and COVR awards and a Round Glass Music Award for a Better World in 2018.
You can learn more about Trine at: http://opsahl.dk/en/home/
JOSEFINE OPSAHL
Born to Trine Opsahl and husband Michael in 1992, Josefine Opsahl wasted little time becoming a renowned cellist as well as an artist pushing the envelope and stretching musical boundaries. Josefine studied classical and contemporary cello performance alongside composition at The Royal Danish Academy of Music and Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois (USA) with an advanced postgrad. soloist degree in Contemporary Creative Art. Josefine displays an uncharacteristic open-mindedness to the use of sounds and instruments, notably deriving from her main instrument, the cello, as well as the use of electronics in her music compositions. Her music has been described as unfolding in the tension between tradition and renewal, technical virtuosity, and artistic intuition, and composed score versus improvisation. She continuously searches for the metaphysical territory where musical expression, art, society, and humans are headed as both beings and creators.
Josefine has performed and/or has had her works performed throughout Europe, as well as in China, Brazil, and Argentina. Her musical projects, ensembles and her album have received rave reviews and prizes, the latest
being Léonie Sonning Talent Prize 2021 and the Wilhelm Hansen Foundation’s scholarship of honour for 2020. Josefine seeks to connect music, art, performance and spaces throughout her works and ideas. She continues to expand her training within the classical music genre, increasing her knowledge of its history, as well as the perception of art and self into different new medias of expression.