Bianca Darcey had a dilemma.
The young harpist from Italy loved spending time each summer at her family’s home on Orr’s Island. But harps don’t travel easily, and finding an instrument to practice on during her month in Harpswell was always a challenge. In recent years, she’d taken to driving to Bath several times a week just to get a chance to play.
“It has always been an issue separating from the instrument for a month every summer,” Bianca said. “It’s not good for fingers to stay out of practice for all that time.”
Then, on one of her last days in town during the summer of 2022, Bianca was blessed by a little Harpswell synchronicity.
Walking with her mother down Garrison Cove Road on Bailey Island toward Cook’s Lobster & Ale House, a route they’d taken countless times before, Bianca happened to glance to her left and there, uncovered in the window of a shed, was a harp.
“I remember gasping,” Bianca recalled, “and my mom turning around, but she really couldn’t see anything until she came to my exact same spot. There was something magical about that moment. The same kind of magic that flutters all around that area.”
That fortuitous glance on a summer morning helped open a window of opportunity for Bianca and introduced her to a fellow harpist and future friend with connections to the harp’s surprisingly rich history in Maine.
The building where Bianca spied the harp is owned by Patrice Lockhart, a psychiatrist and harpist who has played with orchestras across the country, and her artist husband, Leon Anderson. Built on the footprint of cojoined outhouses dating from the 1920s, the structure they call the Boathouse serves the couple as a studio and practice space with stunning views of Harpswell Sound.
Bianca knocked on the Boathouse door, but no one was home. She kept coming back, however, and ultimately found Leon and got Patrice’s email address. Bianca inquired about renting the harp and was told it was hers to use at everyone’s mutual convenience. That’s the way it’s been for the last two summers, with Bianca practicing almost daily.
“Aren’t coincidences wonderful?” Patrice said. “Imagine a lovely young woman from Italy seeing a harp through a window and our bonding over island life, family, and the amazing instrument we are both lucky to play!”
The two musicians come from very different backgrounds but have a shared love of the beautiful sound of the harp and an appreciation of Carlos Salzedo, the French harpist and composer who elevated the instrument and founded the renowned Summer Harp Colony of America in Camden in 1929.
Bianca, 24, lives in Vicenza, a small town in northeast Italy, halfway between Venice and Verona. Her father, James Darcey, went to Bowdoin College. During his sophomore year in 1984, his parents bought a house at the southern tip of Orr’s Island. James later pursued an architecture degree at the University of Virginia, which included a six-month program in Venice. While there, he met Patrizia Guadagnin, Bianca’s mother. The couple married and settled in Vicenza.
But the connection to the Harpswell house has remained intact. “I have spent time there every summer of my life, except during COVID, unfortunately,” Bianca said. “I started walking in that house, and it represents the connection that I have with my grandparents and half my family.”
While not from a musical background, Bianca started playing the harp at age 8, inspired, she guesses, by the harp scene in the Disney movie “The Aristocats.” In February of this year, she received her master’s degree in harp performance from the Conservatorio A. Pedrollo di Vicenza. She will audition soon for another master’s in chamber music at the same conservatory.
“I chose the piece ‘Scintillation’ by Salzedo for my final exam,” Bianca said. “When I came to Maine last year, I had just started practicing it, and that’s when I met Patrice and found out her connection with his harp school in Camden.”
Patrice, 64, grew up in Missouri in a musical family and also started playing the harp at age 8. “The thinking was you get to play more often playing an unusual instrument,” she recalled. She quickly mastered a varied repertoire and attended the highly regarded National Music Camp in Michigan. She later served on the faculty of that organization, now called the Interlochen Arts Camp.
Patrice graduated from the College of Wooster in 1981 and received a master’s from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1982. A 1977 meeting in Cleveland with Alice Chalifoux brought her to Maine.
Chalifoux was a student of Salzedo’s and the primary instructor at the Summer Harp Colony after his death in 1961. In the summer of 1977, Patrice drove to Maine for the first time and was “starstruck” by the state and the music she heard while attending the Summer Harp Colony.
“I learned so much while just listening through another open window, this one on Marine Avenue in Camden,” she said, referencing the home of the Summer Harp Colony.
The colony closed in 2001, but a tribute to the colony and Chalifoux was held in Camden in July, attracting former students and other noted harpists from all over the world.
Patrice went on to play in several Cleveland-area orchestras, but reached a point where she wondered if she could continue for the rest of her life. She was afraid of growing to dislike her well-known repertoire by playing it over and over again. So, in 1995, at age 35 and with three little kids, she went to medical school in Omaha, Nebraska, where she also played in the Omaha Symphony.
“In 2000, I landed back in Maine to do a four-year residency in psychiatry,” Patrice said. “In 2005, I was hired as medical director of the New England Eating Disorders Program, a position I held until 2022.” Since then, she has trained as a yoga instructor and performed with the World Doctors Orchestra. She recently became a consultant for EDCare, an eating disorders program in Denver.
Patrice and Leon married in 2015. They live much of the year in Gorham. A tandem bike ride through Harpswell brought them to the cottage on Garrison Cove Road that they purchased in 2018 and have since remodeled.
Patrice has two harps. A Salzedo model concert grand that she calls Carlos, built in 1981 by Lyon-Healy, is her orchestra and solo instrument. The harp on Bailey Island was built in 1968, also by Lyon-Healy, and is nicknamed Mama Bear because of its “sweet but solid sound.”
Bianca has also come to love the sound of Mama Bear, which she plays while looking out at the sparkling waters to the west of Bailey Island.
“I like to think in a certain way that the harp ‘called to me,’ if that makes sense,” Bianca said. “It was just such a big coincidence to turn around in the right spot, with the right lighting and when the harp was uncovered. And it’s been wonderful to play it ever since. I’m so thankful to Patrice.”
That feeling is mutual. “My husband and I have enjoyed two summers walking over the Cribstone Bridge for fabulous dinners with Bianca and her parents,” Patrice said. “And now we have such a great reason to go to Italy!”
