Bio

Owen Vaughan Hanner & Solar Wind

Owen Vaughan Hanner
Celtic Harp, Piano, Guitars, Flutes, Zithers, Voice, Percussion

Music : the mirror that harmonises its subject: leaving its listener transformed, refreshed, showing life more beautiful, more strange, more free, with more potential. Music, which alters the form of water, helps plants to thrive and flower, cleanses places and people.

Music, which stirs what needs to move and stills what needs to calm.

“Music + herb” = the Chinese pictogram for medicine. All healing modalities began with sound and greenery. The Mayan stories that birdsong sings the sun and seeds awake.

Music, which as legends relate, can turn the day to night, bring the rains, loosen clinging vines, enchant the gods and beasts, and serve as a bridge between worlds. Music, used to exorcise, exalt, mark moments significant, enchant, soothe, console, stimulate, connect, revitalise, remember, forget, refresh, play, and send great waves of change through the world.

The hands on the harp make motions of weaving. Knots in the body or psyche are loosened by the power of melody. The Harp especially works on the heart, just as wooden drums work on the root. It is natural to loosen knots when I play, because I play fluid, and dream a space into being where the old can re-arrange.

I’ve played the harp in hospices and temples in therapy settings. The old images of harping angels, of harps and heavens, the sacredness of the harp from India to Ireland, Uganda to China, attests to something practical — and you will know if it you listen deeply, with sincerity to a Celtic harper.

The flower makes nectar at the murmur of beeswings.

The birdsong sings the fields awake. 

Human song steers light to break on as-yet-unseen horizons.

It is the leading sensory edge of our dreaming as a species. The subtle tendrils of feeling, that shape the form of action.

Music can strike us like a revelation. Through such revelations humanity grows – treasured unfolding by treasured unfolding.

Music leads. existence follows. There is nothing that cannot be rewritten through sound.

 

I play for all events,
write soundtracks and backing music,
teach intuitively to all ages,
record as a session musician
play for personal sessions.

Student-led learning:

Intuitive teaching is a passion of mine, requiring nothing but the passion and perserverence of a student. 

I do not read music, and find it very unnatural to translate music into vision, and then back into music again. The ears can recreate anything instantly, if they are simply nurtured.

I have met many classically-trained musicians who are unable to play by ear, or are frustrated by their perceived lack of originality: trained as they are to walk in other people’s roads. 

And I’ve met even more children and adults who were discouraged from music by the rigid lines of classical teaching. 

If music doesn’t remain fun at every stage, why would you keep up with it?

The primary importance of any teaching is to nurture the passion and connection. With this, all the rest is so much easier.

I teach music in such a way that it is always *your* journey of discovery. I present you with the tools and techniques you desire, to do what *you* wish to do, and find your own way.




 

I welcome you to get in touch with me via the contact form on the homepage!