The harp may look like a heavenly...

The harp may look like a heavenly instrument, but it can be a 95-pound albatross around your neck, harpist Laura Porter says.

You need a station wagon to transport it and friends to help you lug it up and down stairs. Doorjambs get in the way. It bumps against furniture.

And, despite the fluidity and ease with which most harpists appear to play, the instrument is one of the most difficult to master.

“You’re not only using your hands, but your feet as well,” said Porter, who will give a recital today in First Baptist Church of Pasadena. “There are pedals that affect the pitch of the strings. You use all four extremities, coordinating foot motion precisely with hand motion.”

The amazing thing is the beauty of the music. Porter says she has been enchanted by the sounds since she was taken to a concert as a 6-year-old and heard somebody performing, she

thinks, Ginastera’s Harp Concerto.

“I left the concert hall saying, ‘Mommy and Daddy, I want to play the harp,”’ says the Tucson-born Porter, who lives in South Pasadena.

By most accounts, Porter, 28, has learned her instrument well. She has played with the Pasadena, Downey, Ventura County and Bakersfield symphonies. She was the recipient, in 1989, of the prestigious Ruth Lorraine Close Fellowship for harp study and she took second place in 1990 in the American Harp Society’s 10th National Harp Competition.

Today she will perform works by Benjamin Britten, Marcel Tournier, Yehezkel Braun and C. P. E. Bach, two of whose violin pieces Porter has transcribed for the harp.

The recital begins at 3 p.m. in the church at 75 N. Marengo Ave. A $5 donation is suggested.