Melbourne Wedding Entertainer

Festival Woos Relaxed & Music-Loving Folk
by Anthony Bunn, The Border Mail, 1/1/07

A harp player, born in New Zealand and inspired to take up her instrument during a visit to Ireland, has been thrilling music lovers at Australia's oldest folk festival.

Susan Graham is one of a multitude of musicians who have taken their instruments to the Nariel Creek Folk Festival which ends tomorrow after nearly a week.

She said it was the "laidbackness" of the festival which had drawn her from Tecoma in Melbourne's Dandenong Ranges.

"It's nice to come to a folk festival where they haven't got a stage, Ms Graham said.

"It's like the musicians and the audience are one."

Ms Graham, who recently completed a degree in music at Southern Cross University in Lismore in northern NSW, is among a handful of harpists at the festival.

She said the harp had great appeal for the audience and herself.

"It's the uniqueness but also the actual timbre, which is the quality of the sound," Ms Graham said.

Organisers Ian and Diane Simpson said performers come from as far away as Darwin for this year's festival along the banks of the Nariel Creek.

"It's just music, music, music," she said.

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