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[MUSIC PLAYING] GARY EICHTEN: Good afternoon and welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. In this hour of Midday, we're going to visit with the champion of the Gaelic harp and take a trip back in time to the big band era. Both are part of our Voices of Minnesota interview series that we're featuring this hour. Here is Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: 18-karat-gold strings, an eerie connection with a long dead harpist, and music to charm bees. All this and music fill a conversation with Ann Heymann, Gaelic harp champion. The champion title comes from winning a harp-playing contest in Ireland two years in a row.

But Heymann doesn't live in Ireland. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Heymann lives in Winthrop, Minnesota, just west and south of the Twin Cities. She took up the harp and Irish music at age 18, she says, because it felt right.

Lovers of Irish music credit Ann with resurrecting an art form nearly lost, playing tunes composed for the metal-stringed Gaelic harp. The instrument is called the clarsach. Players are called clarsers. The 29 strings are metal, including some that are 18-karat gold.

Ann is often accompanied by her husband, Charlie Heymann, who plays accordion and other Here's Ann playing a medley, "Aisling Gheal," and a traditional tune by John Kelly. Charlie accompanies her on a bright red button accordion.

ANN HEYMANN: It's very funny to be playing this ancient instrument with the 1950s two-row button accordion, the Paolo Soprani. But we figure we can go anywhere with the harp and the accordion, up or down.

DAN OLSON: Charlie's just stringing it across his shoulder. It's a beautiful red model. Charlie thinks it's from about 1950.

ANN HEYMANN: We call it red mother of toilet seat.

[HARP PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Ann Heymann on the Celtic harp and by her side, her husband, Charlie Heymann. Ann, here you are in flyover land, just about as far from Ireland as you can world get. You're a world-champion Celtic harp player. How did this happen?

ANN HEYMANN: It's very odd, but 10 years back now, a researcher in Scotland-- the instrument I play is the medieval harp of Ireland and Highland, Scotland. He was researching the tradition of Harpers' lands. And the MacDonalds had their castle on the Mull of Kintyre. That's a peninsula of Scotland which is closest to Ireland.

And their clan, Harpers, from the 1400s to the mid-1700s were the MacShennoigs. And the Harpers were granted land holdings for their position as Clan Harper. And as the harp tradition was dying out, these MacShennoigs were the last of the Harpers' lands in all of Scotland.

Finally, the last MacShennoig dies and wills the last of the Harpers' lands to his widow. And her name was Ann Heymann, spelled exactly like my name. And it's a German name. And we never expected to find it in Scotland. It's my married name, but--

DAN OLSON: This is a very strange story.

ANN HEYMANN: It's a very odd coincidence. It was written up as-- he wrote it up. He's a researcher and wrote an article ending it with, isn't it odd that the person who's responsible for restoring the playing style to this instrument is an American named Ann Heymann.

DAN OLSON: Predestination. The planets came into alignment.

ANN HEYMANN: I think Ann had to marry Heymann. And Charlie's been there--

DAN OLSON: It was bound to happen.

ANN HEYMANN: --every inch of the way, helping me with the harp. Well, Charlie's playing a cittern now. And I think we'll play some tunes that we learned-- was it our last-- I think, actually, we heard these on our first trip to Brittany. But this will be our third now this summer. So here's some Breton tunes.

[HARP PLAYING]

[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]

DAN OLSON: Ann Heymann on the Celtic harp and by her side, her husband, Charlie Heymann. Are you a specialist? Are you an expert in the area of classical Gaelic music, Ann, or is this folk music? Do you want to put a label on this?

CHARLIE HEYMANN: Classical Gaelic music was probably the harp music.

ANN HEYMANN: Yes. And so I would say yes. We play a broad range of Irish and Scottish music. And we also play some Welsh, Breton, even Galician music. But we're strongest from the Irish and Scottish standpoint. I think classical is maybe the best way of saying it, but not-- maybe national music. It wasn't art music, but it was orally transmitted.

DAN OLSON: It's not written down.

ANN HEYMANN: The clarsach enjoyed over 1,000 years of oral tradition. And as it was dying out, they had a harp festival in Belfast. The French Revolution had just happened. And Ireland was thinking maybe we could free ourselves.

And so they had a political rally in Belfast. And along with this political rally, there was new feelings of nationalism. So people were interested in the Gaelic language. And a Dr. James McDonnell organized this harp festival.

CHARLIE HEYMANN: In 1792.

ANN HEYMANN: And they invited any harper to come and play the old music. And they commissioned a young 19-year-old organist to write down the music played. 10 harpers came. One was a woman. The oldest one was Denis Hempson. He was 97 years old. And he played in the old style.

So I have a copy. I also play a copy of his instrument, which is in the Guinness archives. They have a museum. And it's one of their treasures. And I play a copy of that instrument and have recorded some of his pieces.

DAN OLSON: Amazing. That's an amazing story in itself. That poor 19-year-old who was just, I imagine, probably had a nervous breakdown.

ANN HEYMANN: He had never heard this music before, even though he had grown up in Ireland and was a musician. He had never heard it. But it so impressed him that it became his life's work. And it actually became the first collection of music collected from traditional sources in the British Isles.

DAN OLSON: You do not have Irish heritage. Is that so?

ANN HEYMANN: No, but I think probably a lot of people in Ireland have some of my Scandinavian heritage.

[LAUGHTER]

DAN OLSON: OK. Fair enough. We've established that. Did I read someplace that you are world champion Celtic harpist? Where did I get this title from, this idea that somehow--

ANN HEYMANN: I kind of like it. That sounds good.

DAN OLSON: It has a great ring to it, I know. But you apparently prevailed at some very important contest.

ANN HEYMANN: Well, actually, there was a harp festival in the Midlands in Granard in 1781, '82, and '83. And they had a bicentenary, a 200th anniversary. And we were going there to be there. And we got talked into competing. We didn't believe in competing.

And I ended up winning two years in a row. And I was on the wrong instrument. Everyone was playing the neo Irish harp, this nylon-strung instrument based off of a parlor room idea of what the Irish harp should be.

DAN OLSON: You're listening to Ann Heymann and her husband, Charlie. Along with her Gaelic harp, Ann and Charlie came to the Minnesota Public Radio studio with a batch of other instruments, including a brass candlestick and a wooden mallet.

Charlie uses them to accompany Ann on a truly strange tune used hundreds of years ago to charm bees. Ann found the references to the bee charm music by studying old Gaelic music manuscripts.

ANN HEYMANN: The languages are short lines, but even activity in February, that's when the bees start getting active. Food for your children-- that was a promise that beekeepers would leave to the bees. We'll take your honey, but will leave enough for you to exist. Branch for repose-- that was a popular line to get swarming bees to settle.

In fact, in Ireland today, what is left traditionally of the bee charm is tanging or the ringing on brass metal and shouting the line, [NON-ENGLISH]. And so this piece, we think it's a remnant of a Gaelic bee charm. And bear in mind that the two oldest bee charms that are known, a High German and an Anglo-Saxon bee charm, never once specifically mention bees in it.

Warrior maidens-- even there's terms like bull, cattle in here. But people don't realize unless you've looked at bee lore that they would refer to bees as types of cattle and bulls. And so--

DAN OLSON: For what purpose? To get the bees to do what? To swarm, to go to the hive?

CHARLIE HEYMANN: To settle on your property so that you own the rights to the honey.

DAN OLSON: Well, yeah, because this was very important if you had honey.

ANN HEYMANN: And bees were very special. They were thought to be messengers to God. So if the head of the house died, one of the first jobs would be to go out and tell the bees. But we've put this-- this bee charm actually appears-- or what this [NON-ENGLISH], which is pre-old Irish. So it's very ancient language.

Some scholars think that it's the remnants of druidic chant. But we've put this-- these words fit very well to this very archaic style pibroch from Scotland, which the title, [NON-ENGLISH] translates as "a drizzle of honey."

[CANDLESTICK RINGING]

[NON-ENGLISH CHANT]

[HARP PLAYING]

[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]

DAN OLSON: Well, there's something you don't hear every day.

CHARLIE HEYMANN: Like that candlestick.

DAN OLSON: Here's Charlie with still another instrument, a wooden mallet and a big old brass--

CHARLIE HEYMANN: Brass candlestick.

DAN OLSON: Holy cow.

CHARLIE HEYMANN: That's taken from modern folklore that was collected in this century in Ireland.

ANN HEYMANN: But this is practice. The tanging on brass goes back to prehistory for-- and I'm not sure why. We haven't done the research. I have seen no explanation as to why, or if indeed it works, to make swarming bees settle, tanging on brass. So there's always more to the research. But bees interested us because they're the symbol animal, the soundbox of the instrument.

DAN OLSON: How so?

ANN HEYMANN: Well, it looks like a beehive. And you listen to it. You hear the sound, the resonant sound. And traditionally, the soundbox was made of willow. And bees are connected with willow. They are what pollinate willows.

And also the bees hum together. They match the pitch of the queen and their drone. So you have the females and males matching pitches. And just like the [NON-ENGLISH], the two, as I mentioned, the lying together, the male and the female voice in unison.

[NOTES PLAYING]

And those two just like, see--

[NOTES PLAYING]

The buzzing of bees. And those two strings were tuned first on the harp. And then the rest of the scale is generated from that.

[NOTES PLAYING]

This medley is from the Scottish lute repertoire from a 16th-century manuscript, and it features the 18-karat-gold strings.

[HARP PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Ann Heymann on the Celtic harp, and by her side, her husband, Charlie Heymann. Now, this music is infectious. It grabs you. And it is considered drinking-house music, drinking songs, bar room, saloon music. It's serious music. Yes? I'm nodding yes, looking for assent here. It sounds serious to me. It's pleasant to listen to. It's wonderful melody.

ANN HEYMANN: We have done our stints in the bars.

DAN OLSON: I see.

ANN HEYMANN: In fact, we're doing a stint in the bar tonight.

DAN OLSON: But was this music of formal settings too? Well, you point out earlier that the music was lost apparently for a period of time.

ANN HEYMANN: Well, yes. And it's been our job to recover the voice of the clarsach. And we bring it into the bar. But it really isn't-- you need silence for it. So Charlie sings ballads. And we have the dance music. And we put in some harp music.

But it isn't the concert setting that's really required for us to do our more serious material. We just got back from a six-week tour in Australia. We'll be going back for the third year in a row to do a concert tour and teach in Brittany, France. Brittany, it's one of the Celtic nations. The Breton language is a lot like Welsh.

We'll be doing some festivals in Germany this summer. I mentioned the Belfast Harp Festival. When they had the 200th anniversary in 1992, they brought us over for that because we were the ones to present their true instrument.

And a couple of summers ago, they had the-- International Edinburgh Festival had a focus on the Scottish harp. And there was a series of seven Scottish harp concerts. And they brought us over for that. We participated in three of them.

And a 32-minute pibroch, ceól mór-- there's a connection between the old clarsach and the pipe, the classical pipe music. And I performed a piece 32 minutes long. And that was the focus of the final concert.

CHARLIE HEYMANN: A quick backtrack here to the harp's traditional idiom. When it was in its native setting and at the height of its popularity, it played essentially ritual music and sacred music. It was not a music-- it was not an instrument of the people. It didn't play folk music.

DAN OLSON: It wasn't in the barrooms at all. It was in church.

CHARLIE HEYMANN: And it wasn't in the cottages. It wasn't played by the farmers. It wasn't played--

DAN OLSON: It was not folk music.

CHARLIE HEYMANN: No.

DAN OLSON: These were trained musicians playing it at court and in church.

ANN HEYMANN: At court. Court musicians for the chieftains.

[HARP PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Gaelic harpist Ann Heymann, playing the metal-stringed clarsach, a traditional Irish and Scottish instrument on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson.

The clarsachs being played these days are modeled after instruments from hundreds of years ago. The shape is triangular. Ann rests the base of her harp on a small box. A black cloth is spread underneath, supplying a dark background so Ann can see the 29 strings clearly.

A double-headed eel, a mythical Irish creature, is carved into the harp's front. Ann says the instrument she's playing these days is from Minnesota.

ANN HEYMANN: A Duluth man, David Kortier, who is a full-time harp-maker, he made this instrument. We worked together to get this instrument made. We imported-- the soundbox is carved out of a one piece of wood from willow, imported from Essex.

And actually, the harmonic curve, that's where the tuning pins are, the top arm of the harp and the four pillar, which is curved, is from oak that I actually harvested from trees in Minnesota woods that were cut down for housing.

[HARP PLAYING]

Where the harp came from, how it traveled is still a mystery. Right now one current thought is that it came into the British Isles. The harp came into the British Isles by the Scandinavian skalds. So if I'm Scandinavian background-- I was born here in Minnesota, and I'm one of-- then we'd be bringing the harp back.

DAN OLSON: There you have it. Ann Heymann has just completed the circle. And a great trip it has been. Ann Heymann and her driver, husband, accompanist, vocalist Charlie Heymann by her side here in the studio with us.

ANN HEYMANN: Charlie is very responsible. I had no teacher. There were no recordings, no tutors.

DAN OLSON: Do you have students? Are you teaching the harp to anyone?

ANN HEYMANN: I do have students mostly. I do workshops at events. I had a student come for a month from Australia. I've had from Japan. I've had from Ireland several times, from around this country. A few people in the area come out and study with me.

CHARLIE HEYMANN: We should also mention that just because this is Minnesota, Ann has been stated as a master artist by the Minnesota State Arts Board, so that-- Minnesota residents qualify for grants to study with her.

ANN HEYMANN: Under the folk apprenticeship. Then I claim I'm a folk musician for this one. And I am. I am. I play folk. I play modern dance music on the instrument. And I play airs, song airs that have gone into the folk tradition. So it's not mutually exclusive.

DAN OLSON: Do you find it is a difficult instrument? That is, when your students come to you and they say, Ann, this is fabulously difficult. I've been practicing here for hours. I can't get anywhere.

ANN HEYMANN: It's considered that. And Derek Bell of the Chieftains has said things like, it's the most difficult harp to play, more difficult than the Pleyel chromatic harp. And he lists a list of instruments. Mainly because of these long-ringing strings-- here, if I play a few notes in a row here--

[NOTES PLAYING]

--you hear what a mess it is.

DAN OLSON: They just keep going and going.

ANN HEYMANN: And yeah, so they ring out a long time. But that's a quality.

DAN OLSON: You should say--

ANN HEYMANN: What I do then is I have to play the notes.

[NOTES PLAYING]

So I have a chord. I change chords. I change harmony as I play a melody line.

[HARP PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Ann Heymann, what do you call that tune, your own composition?

ANN HEYMANN: That's "Planxty Drew". And "planxty" is stolen from Turlough O'Carolan. And we played one of his pieces. A lot of his pieces were called planxties. And people have some ideas, but no one knows exactly how that translates, planxty. But "Planxty Drew"-- and Drew is a family friend, and this was for her on the occasion of the birth of her daughter.

DAN OLSON: A beautiful tune.

ANN HEYMANN: Thank you.

DAN OLSON: Ann Heymann, Charlie Heymann, thank you so much. Pleasure to talk to you. And thanks for coming in.

CHARLIE HEYMANN: Thank you.

ANN HEYMANN: Thank you. Dan

[HARP PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Gaelic harpist Ann Heymann, accompanied by her husband, Charlie Heymann, playing "Planxty Sweeney." They have two compact disk recordings available, one distributed by Flying Fish Records and another by Clarsach Music in Winthrop.

You can learn more on the world wide web by searching Ann Heymann, spelled A-N-N H-E-Y-M-A-N-N. Thanks to Minnesota Public Radio's Craig Thorson for recording the session. I'm Dan Olson.

[HARP PLAYING]

GARY EICHTEN: This is Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. And today we're presenting two Voices of Minnesota interviews. Our focus today is on two Minnesotans who've made their mark in music, Gaelic harp and now big band music.

Of course, rock and roll, disco, and country dominated nearly every spot on commercial radio stations back in the mid 1970s. But once a week, if you'll recall, once a week for an hour, Twin Cities residents also had a chance to hear the music that helped launch radio, big band music.

Dan Olson talked with the bandleader and hotel manager who arranged those broadcasts from 1975 to 1983.

DAN OLSON: Every Sunday night for eight years, Jerry Mayeron and his big band members took the stand for a live radio broadcast at the former Registry, now the DoubleTree Hotel in Bloomington. Jerry Mayeron has been leading and booking big bands and other acts in Minnesota for over 50 years.

His favorite job, he says, was the Sunday night stint at the Registry. The Mayeron Big Band broadcasts were heard on what was then WCCO FM in the Twin Cities. The band played Glenn Miller tunes because that's what the hotel manager, Henry Fisher, wanted.

I talked recently with Mayeron and Fisher about those years. Fisher recorded all the broadcasts from the Registry and brought them along. Let's hear a sample of what the band sounded like.

[JERRY MAYERON ORCHESTRA, "STRING OF PEARLS"]

We'll return to Glenn Miller's "String of Pearls" played by Jerry Mayeron and his friends in a moment. Retired Registry Hotel manager Henry Fisher and Jerry Mayeron talked with me about how they became interested in big band music.

HENRY FISHER: I really wanted my own big band, but I never could quite get that put together.

DAN OLSON: So instead, you had to strong-arm Jerry Mayeron here, your pal, and say, Jerry, will you come to the Registry and play music?

HENRY FISHER: I had the pleasure of hearing Jerry play early in January of 1975. So I made a decision. If I could afford it and work it out, I was going to bring Jerry into the Registry Hotel and broadcast.

DAN OLSON: Jerry Mayeron, you're a Saint Paul boy, graduate of St. Paul Central High School. What got you started in music?

JERRY MAYERON: I always liked music. As a kid, I used to go down to Grand and Oxford. Used to be a dance hall there called The Strand. And I used to stand out in the alley by the back door and listen to these bands all there, even as a little kid.

DAN OLSON: How old were you when you were doing this?

JERRY MAYERON: Probably 10, 12, 14 years old.

DAN OLSON: Wow. And the parents weren't worried. They thought, well, he's out listening to music. How bad could it possibly be?

JERRY MAYERON: That's right. Pretty much that way.

DAN OLSON: Are you a trained piano player? Are you a trained musician?

JERRY MAYERON: Oh, yes. I started out with classical piano. And then I took some jazz lessons later on.

DAN OLSON: Well, what were your parents thinking about that? They thought, we're going to have this child prodigy in Carnegie Hall, and here this guy is straying off into the jazz halls. What did they think about that?

JERRY MAYERON: Well, they didn't really know what I was doing as far as the music went.

DAN OLSON: So the Depression was on.

JERRY MAYERON: You might say that, yes.

DAN OLSON: And this was entertainment. This was a big deal. Was the place just mobbed with--

JERRY MAYERON: Oh, yes. Yeah. In those days, that was a very popular dance hall.

DAN OLSON: So you were going into teenage years at this point. And then you finished high school. Were you a high school band kid too?

JERRY MAYERON: I was just starting to play. There was a band. I used to play once in a while with a band called The Glad Olinger Band, who had-- a lot of local musicians played with this band, too, a very good dance band.

DAN OLSON: And then University of Minnesota. Do I have that right?

JERRY MAYERON: That's right.

DAN OLSON: What happened there?

JERRY MAYERON: Well, I was taking-- this was the years of the war. And I was taking business. I was in business school rather than music.

DAN OLSON: You were going to make some money. You were to give up this musical career.

JERRY MAYERON: That's about it. Little did I know that I was going to be stuck in the music business, which I did from there on.

DAN OLSON: Henry Fisher has had the-- your friend Henry Fisher has had the foresight over the years to, later on when you were playing at the Registry, make tapes. And we have the benefit not only of the tapes, but of the CDs.

HENRY FISHER: I was a student of Glenn Miller music. I wasn't a student of Glenn Miller, but his music. I can remember as a-- just out of high school in 1939, Glenn Miller Band come to south of the farm, about 40 miles to Lake Wawasee Ballroom.

DAN OLSON: We're talking about Southern Michigan now.

HENRY FISHER: Yes, we are. And so I didn't have $1 and a quarter to get in the front door. I had a date I took down and left her in the car. And I went to the back of the dance hall and put my ear against the back of the wood so I could hear the playing. And I heard most percussion, but I heard the music also.

And an hour and a half later, I went out to find my date. And she was so angry, she never went out with me again.

[BIG BAND MUSIC PLAYING]

BOB UTECHT: Yeah. Yowzer, they used to say.

DAN OLSON: Bob Utecht was the announcer for the live broadcasts from the Registry Hotel. Jerry Mayeron says the personnel in the 10-piece band varied and included over the years Dick Clay and Bobby Crea on saxophones, Biddy Bastien on bass, Ed Boike on clarinet, Pat Roberts on trumpet, among many others.

So what were all these guys doing? Were they working day jobs, and Jerry Mayeron would call up and say, hey, you got to get out to the Registry tonight?

HENRY FISHER: A lot of them. A lot of them did that.

DAN OLSON: Really.

HENRY FISHER: A lot of them were mailmen.

DAN OLSON: Really?

HENRY FISHER: Several of the musicians. In fact, the trumpet player, Pat Roberts, that was on that record, had been a mailman for about 25 or 30 years. And he was a great trumpet player. He could have played with any band in the country.

DAN OLSON: We're going to go to the Registry again and revisit the sound from 25 years ago when Jerry Mayeron was on stand. His friend Henry Fisher was probably standing by. Henry, were you dancing or were you listening?

HENRY FISHER: I was listening.

DAN OLSON: I guess that's the sign of a serious big band music lover, when you're listening instead of dancing.

HENRY FISHER: We had a rule that no employee would dance. And since I was a manager of the Registry, I didn't dance either.

DAN OLSON: The top dog had to set the example. So there you were. What are we going to hear? Sleepy Lagoon here. You say Bobby Crea.

HENRY FISHER: Bobby Crea is the saxophone player on this record.

[JERRY MAYERON ORCHESTRA, "SLEEPY LAGOON"]

BOB UTECHT: Yes. Lovely music.

DAN OLSON: Bob Utecht and the Jerry Mayeron Band at the Registry Hotel sometime in the late 1970s. And the hotel top brass, your bosses in whichever city they were located, when they heard what Henry Fisher was up to in the Twin Cities, what did they say?

HENRY FISHER: Couldn't say much because it was successful. Success, you know, is a great thing to have. They even copied-- tried to copy this in a hotel in Newport Beach, the Registry Hotel in Newport Beach on Sunday nights.

DAN OLSON: Obviously, you got great reaction, but you had to quit. Why did the music end?

HENRY FISHER: Well, I left the hotel.

DAN OLSON: The patron. The patron was gone.

HENRY FISHER: I had hip surgery, and I had to leave.

DAN OLSON: Sure. And as a result, the Jerry Mayeron Band days at the registry were over.

HENRY FISHER: Well, they brought in a European manager, as I recall. And he had no time for this kind of music. He said, we got to have young kids. So he made the change. And within about a month, I think, the whole thing folded up.

DAN OLSON: Big band music lives on. Why do you think, Jerry and Henry, why does big band music live on?

JERRY MAYERON: See, it's romantic. It's where people communicated. It's where people danced. They enjoyed life, and they were thinking of positive things all the time. It's a very positive music. It's not a negative music. To have and to hold, it's a great thing today. We need more of it.

DAN OLSON: Jerry Mayeron, Henry Fisher, thanks so much for dropping by and bringing the CDs and tapes, Henry, clicks, gulps, blips and all. That was the air check version made onto CD by you. The air check from WCCO FM, the radio station at the time, carrying the Sunday night live broadcast from the Registry in Bloomington. Thanks so much for bringing them by.

HENRY FISHER: You're welcome.

DAN OLSON: Jerry, thanks for coming by.

JERRY MAYERON: My pleasure.

DAN OLSON: Big band leader Jerry Mayeron and his friend Henry Fisher, manager of the former Registry Hotel in Bloomington. Mayeron still books musical groups and other acts. For eight years, from 1975 to 1983, his band played Glenn Miller tunes every Sunday night.

[JERRY MAYERON ORCHESTRA, "PENNSYLVANIA 6-5000"]

MEN: Pennsylvania 6-5000. Pennsylvania 6-5000. Pennsylvania 6-5000.

GARY EICHTEN: Can't beat it with a stick. Well, that does it for our Voices of Minnesota interviews for the day. Series is produced by Dan Olson.