Search - Derek Bell :: The Mystic Harp

Derek Bell, of the Chieftains,, captures the haunting, mystical quality of traditional Celtic music on this solo album of original melodies by Donald Walters. Derek has played harp for 23 years with five-time Grammy Award-winning group, The Chieftains--Ireland's best-known interpreters of traditional Celtic music. Classically trained, Bell joined the group in 1972, after a distinguished career as a harpist with the Northern Ireland BBC Orchestra, and as a professor of harp and Irish harps at the Belfast Academy of Music. For thirty-one years, The Chieftains have been the most influential of the Irish folk musicians, credited with doing more to spread the appreciation of traditional Irish music than any other group in Ireland's history. Bell, a resident of Northern Ireland, has several solo albums to his credit. He has composed three piano sonatas and Symphony in E-flat for orchestra, and is the recipient of the Manns Prize from the Royal College of Music