- What is it that you do?
I play folk-harp: instrumental Irish and European folk and early music. I also love traditional folk ballads. I’ve been rearranging some of my old guitar repertoire for harp: upbeat Irish pub songs and a few of my originals that fit the scene.
2. What got you interested in starting out in this business?
I started doing solo acoustic stuff on the side when my rock band lineup issues. I was doing traditional Irish folk songs, English ballads, and some Tullish originals. People told me that my folk music would fit at Renaissance Faires, so I auditioned for the New Jersey Renaissance Kingdom in 2004 and started my journey! I used to play a bunch of instruments but lately I’ve just been focusing on harp. I love the instant atmosphere created by the sound of it, and I can play full instrumental arrangements solo or sing to it.
3. What was your local faire or home faire?
I started out as a cast musician at the NJRK. I played English Country and Morris dances on recorder for the Revellers dancers, and I played guitar and sang with the Wench and Rogue show. I also did guitar, flute, and harp in a group called Sarabande that did a nice mix of Irish jigs and reels, Romani and Eastern European folk, and Renaissance tunes.
After that, I moved to Colorado and got hired to play harp at the CORF for four years. Now I travel around the northeast playing a bunch of (mostly single-weekend) events.
4. What advice do you have to give to others that are just starting out in this business? Or how to stay in this business?
Try and learn the music off old Irish and British recordings to get the traditional accents, ornamental music, and rhythms down (that stuff doesn’t come across in sheet music). Listen to it until the music is in your head when you’re NOT listening to it!
A fiddle, flute, or whistle player adds a lot to a folk group – you can also give the vocals a break with some Irish jigs and reels!
Apply to a bunch of events (check out Renlist.com); if your first choice doesn’t need a musician right now or the entertainment director doesn’t care for you, that doesn’t mean you won’t be wanted elsewhere! Smaller faires have a range of styles and needs, so give them a shot – I’ve actually pulled bigger crowds (and tips/CD sales) at some of the smaller faires, too!
Ren Faires can be a weird performance environment – I’ve been on stage singing and had someone interrupt me to ask where the bathroom is. Learn to roll with it and do what you can to make things better (like considering the possibility of roving children or sudden rain when you walk away from your gear).
5. Are you doing any online sales or virtual performances?
I have music downloads or free streaming available at https://mattschwarz.bandcamp.com/ The Matt Schwarz ‶Journeyman Harper″ and ‶Lost Way″ albums are my instrumental harp and guitar-vocal albums, (I also have classical compositions and rock stuff on there). Most of this music is also on the usual streaming sites (Spotify, itunes).
6. Why Renaissance Faires or theme? What is it that made you so interested in this period?
I grew up on fantasy novels and video games, Jethro Tull and Iron Maiden (whose epic narrative songs with historical and supernatural themes are like a modern version of traditional folk ballads). As I got older, I got into the older European culture: listening to old folkies like the Clancy Brothers and Fairport Convention, reading medieval Arthurian novels and Spencer’s Faerie Queene. I’ve also spent much of my adult life working outside, which gives me a bit of a tie to an earlier time than if I spent it all in a windowless office in front of a computer (although I’ve done a bit of that, as well).
7. What makes your act/wares unique or different?
In a way, I try and do just the opposite! I want people to feel they could’ve seen someone like me decades (or even centuries) ago. Lately I’ve been learning songs from old recordings – Clancy Brothers songs or field recordings of Irish pub harpists. I don’t see myself as a ‶star″ so much as a conduit to channel an old tradition from the past to the present.
My folk music background helps keep my other musical activities unique and different, though! My harp and flute have snuck into my rock work, and my band Sleepy Hollow even rocked out a song from my trad. repertoire (‶Sorrow’s Might,″ a Swedish variant of ‶the Unquiet Grave″). My first string quartet was influenced by the Romani-violin music my folk band Sarabande used to play.
8. What was your very first experience at a renaissance festival? What education or training if any do you have that led to what you do?
My college roommate introduced me to the NYRF in the late 90s. I used to love watching the musical acts – Shaman (aka Mystic Minstrels) and the Bard O’Neill (Diane Linn) and the like. I still have a bunch of old CDs and cassettes from those days.
I started out self-taught from books and listening to folk recordings. But, I later went to grad school for music theory and composition, and included some early music studies where I could. I’ve taken courses on medieval and Renaissance music, ear training, and lessons in voice, harp, and viola da gamba. I’ve also taken workshops at the Somerset Folk-Harp festival. I give adult-school lectures on music history.
9. What is your go to for food at faire? You can name a food vendor or if you are a food vendor, what is your most sold item?
I did a weekend at the CTRF this past fall, and was delighted to find Mel’s Magikal Meals could supply me with the somewhat rare Scotch egg! If I can get a Scotch egg or meat pie, I’m a happy harper.
10. Plug your website or fan page here (or both)
https://m.facebook.com/people/Matthew-H-Schwarz/100067386460286/
https://sleepyhollowband.com/matt-schwarz-harpist-epk
