Ann Hobson Pilot: Harpist and historian extraordinaire

Erin Washington

Ann Hobson Pilot has played harp for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) for nearly 40 years, and is one of the few African American harp players in the world.

She is also a genuine heroine in the harpists’ community, largely because she went to find the roots of her instrument — in Africa.

Pilot’s musical training began with the piano when she was 6 years old, but when she found a harp in her high school at age 14, something clicked.

She then began a long process of practice and performance that turned into a 38-year career with the BSO. But it wasn’t easy.

“It was one of the most difficult instruments because of all the strings, 47 strings, and also seven foot pedals,” Pilot said. “And there are three notches for each of the pedals. So it’s pretty mechanically complicated.”

The transition from piano was pretty complicated, too.

The harp has nearly as wide a musical range as the piano, but its strings aren’t in a box like they are in a piano, Pilot explained.

“Piano strings are enclosed in a box and are mostly made out of steel, whereas the harp strings are made out of gut and they’re right there out in the open, so they get affected by temperature change or humidity change,” she said. This means that the harps strings go out of tune more easily than piano strings and require more maintenance and care.

After much practice and dedication, Pilot was able to master the harp, enabling her to pursue a career playing the instrument. After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Music, she performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony and was principal harp of the Washington National Symphony in Washington, D.C.

In 1969, she joined the BSO as assistant principal harp and principal with the Boston Pops. She was made principal of the orchestra in 1980, and has remained there ever since. While on several occasions she has performed separately as a soloist around the world, the BSO is her home.

“It’s one of the greatest orchestras in the world,” she said. “And it’s actually very exciting to sit there with all this wonderful sound around you. Being able to play with the greatest conductors, the greatest musicians in the world, and having one of the greatest halls, Symphony Hall.” In the summer she plays in Tanglewood, which she called “a beautiful place.”

Pilot, who performed last weekend as a guest soloist with Symphony by the Sea in Salem and Byfield, has performed with a number of great artists, including the legendary Leonard Bernstein, composer and pianist Claudio Arrau, soprano Jessye Norman, composer and conductor John Williams, and longtime Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler.

“Arthur Fiedler was one of the reasons I came to Boston,” Pilot recalled. “He used to come to guest conduct down [in Washington, D.C.], so when they had a harp opening here, he asked me one time when he was down there, ‘You know, I really like your playing. Why don’t you come up and audition for the job?’” Pilot decided to do so.

“Then, as is now, they had auditions behind a screen. And that started back, I guess, in the ’60s, so that there wouldn’t be any discrimination because of race or sex, so that they could just listen to you play and not see who it is.”

One of Pilot’s more interesting accomplishments occurred on a trip to Africa. In 1997 she took a one-year sabbatical and traveled with her husband.

“Rather than just go and be a tourist, I thought it would be fun to do some research while I was there about the origins of the harp,” she said. She was invited to perform as a soloist at the National Symphony of Johannesburg. She discovered prior to the journey that one of the musical ancestors of the harp was an instrument played by the Bushmen of Namibia.

“We went to visit with an ethnomusicologist in California who can trace the origins of the harp back to the bow and arrow,” Pilot said. “The very first harp looked like nothing more than an elongated bow. They then discovered that if they made it into a triangular shape, it was more sturdy [and] able to hold more. So from that standpoint, then you saw a lot of harps in Uganda and harps in Egypt on the walls of the caves and all, and then from there it went into Mesopotamia and then into Europe.”

Pilot was discussing the plans for the trip with a friend who worked at WGBH, who took interest in the story. As a result of that conversation, the sabbatical now included a documentary crew.

“They sent over film crews, and they filmed me doing a concert with the National Symphony of Johannesburg, giving a master class, and then going out into the Kalahari Desert,” Pilot said. The end result was a 30-minute documentary that aired nationwide on PBS, called “Ann Hobson Pilot: A Musical Journey.”

Following the concert, she pursued the origins of the harp in Namibia.

“I was put into contact with an anthropologist who worked with the Bushmen there, and it was her idea that we go into the desert. And we met with her, and met with the San people,” another name for Bushmen, she said. The anthropologist served as a translator for Pilot and her husband.

After meeting the Bushmen, the Pilots were feted with a performance, which was included in the documentary.

“They were playing their instruments for us,” Pilot said. “There’s even a little scene where we start dancing to the music that they played. And then, because I couldn’t bring a harp, the camera guy had taken the footage from the concert, so he showed [them footage of] me playing the harp on the video camera. And you can tell by their faces that [the San people were] really astonished.”

Although Pilot and the native African musicians had something in common, their lifestyle was still a bit of a shock to her.

“It was just unbelievable,” she said. “The strange thing was that they had a very, very hard life. Their numbers are down and I think there’s only about, when we were there in ’97, there was only about 25,000 of them left in the region.” Now only 82,000 San people remain in Botswana and Namibia.

“They had a very hard life,” she explained. “The man that we were speaking to, I would have said he was about in his 80s, and they said, ‘Oh no, he’s only about 57.’”

What she learned about their society and music was a combination of pre-journey research and field experience.

“There are a lot of different instruments that come from Africa, a lot of different harp-like instruments,” she said. The San people played one kind, called an oaci. “Actually, there are a lot of other instruments in Africa that look more like the standard triangular harp,” she went on. “But it was kind of neat being there because they’re still hunters and gatherers and their music is not sophisticated at all. So it was just sort of a natural feeling.”

It was another, quite powerful feeling to be an African American visitor in the most rural parts of Africa.

“I always thought it was a very important thing to do, to go to Africa at some point in my life, just because that’s where my roots were many, many hundreds of years ago,” said Pilot. “So from that standpoint, it was a very, very important thing to do.”

For Pilot, seeing and hearing the people of her ancestral homeland playing an instrument similar to hers was special.

“When I was brought up here [in America] playing the harp, most of the time [I was] the only black. From that standpoint, when you see a lot of Africans playing instruments that the harp that I play might have been derived from, it gave me an added sense of pride.”