At 4, She’d Already Fingered Her Career

It didn’t take long for Harriet Wood to find her musical niche in life.

“I heard a harp record when I was 4 years old and told my parents that was the music I wanted to play,” said Wood, who now plays engagements all over the area.

Wood first started playing piano, though, because her mother was a pianist. But when she was 7, she rented a harp with money saved from her allowance.

“My mother decided if I was that determined, she would get me a harp, and I’ve been playing one ever since.” Wood went on to study music at the University of Oregon and at the Juilliard School of Music, and she has taught harp at Fullerton College and Cal State Fullerton.

Wood, who lives in Long Beach, has for 11 years been playing for the Sunday brunch crowd on the Queen Mary. She has been a member of the Disneyland Orchestra; played three years at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, often as a soloist, and performed at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel in Costa Mesa for 10 years.

During those years, Wood was one of a number of musicians who visited Orange County elementary schools to show and play their instruments to the children.

“Some of those years I would visit 60 schools,” she said. “It was an educational program that gave the students an up-close look at various instruments.”

Her interest in the harp has never waned.

“I love to play it,”she said. “Having the sound around me is just as pleasing to me as it has ever been.”

She apparently has passed on her enthusiasm to her daughter, Marsha, 30, who plays harp at the Westgate Hotel in San Diego.

The harp sound is becoming more popular, Wood says. She performs at receptions for women’s clubs, weddings, bar mitzvahs and in theme programs for Valentine’s Day, Easter and Halloween. Recently, Wood played at the reception of the Radiation and Health Fair at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel.

“It’s fun doing programs,” she said. “Sometimes I pick up ideas for the theme by reading the newspaper.”

One of her themes, for example, revolved around wigs--Wood played music from countries where wigs were developed.

The harp is popular for such events, she says, because “people find it is nice background for dinner music because they can talk over it, even in groups” and the flavor of the harp sound won’t be affected.

Even with her playing schedule, Wood still practices every day.

“You never get so good you know everything,” she says. Besides, “it’s a lot of work to keep my fingers calloused so they don’t hurt when I play. You do that by practicing.”

Wood said she doesn’t get much attention from the audience when she’s providing the background music, but “that doesn’t bother me a bit. I’m usually wrapped up in the sound of what I’m doing.” She noted, though, that there are people who do pay attention to the music, much of which she arranges herself.

The songs range from classical to popular. She says she likes all music equally.

“I try to make everything I play as orchestral as possible.”

Buoyed by the success of their own fund-raising and some help from parents, 14 members of the Huntington Beach Junior Lifeguard Team will compete in the World Lifesaving Championships in Lubeck, Germany, next month.

That event, which takes place Aug. 11 through 15, will have teams from 30 countries. To make sure they’re tuned up for it, the Huntington Beach group will be competing in another meet in Wales this Saturday and Sunday.

The students who are participating are between 14 and 18 years old and were chosen from among 700 swimmers in the program. They are Julie Jackle, Louis Lopez, Amy Martin, Juli Anna Matto, Keith Metzger, Wendy Monahan, Jeffery Moohr, Kellie Ortega, Chad A. Prior, David J. Prior, Kelli Quinn, Greg Reddish, Erin Staunton and Bryan Walker.