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SUSANN McDonald, Distinguished Professor of Music at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, has celebrated her eightieth birthday. You can ask any harpist and will get the same response: Susann McDonald is one of the great harpists and harp teachers in the world. She has been a teacher and a role model to an amazing number of the most prominent harpists of our time, she has created the largest harp department in the world at Indiana University, she founded the USA International Harp Competition and, until recently, was Artistic Director of the World Harp Congress. Still, her legacy and impact on the harp world is difficult to describe because it is so deep and so wide.
Susann McDonald has been teaching for thirtyfive years at Indiana University, and I have been fortunate to be a witness of her life for nearly three decades. I was first her student, and then I became her junior colleague at IU.
"Let's have her play harp ... "
The journey that took Susann McDonald to Bloomington, Indiana, was an unusual one for a young lady with deep Midwestern roots. Her early career started in Illinois, matured in France, took root in New York City, southern California, Arizona, and Indiana, and has spread around the world.
Susann was born in Rock Island, Illinois, a city on the Mississippi River. Her introduction to the harp was very much intertwined with family and with faith. Her maternal grandfather, Edward Alexander Kelly Hackett, had made his mark in publishing, and was the publisher and editor of the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Sentinel newspaper. In Susann's words, "He had a big heart and was a committed philanthropist." A Presbyterian lay minister at Los Angeles' Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, he also launched a mission hospital in Guanjou, China.
While spending summers in Beverly Hills, California, Edward Alexander Hackett also worked in prison ministry. He would go to local prisons, taking with him a harpist to accompany hymns during the service. The harpist who played for prisoners also became the first harp teacher of Susann's mother, Catherine Hackett. Susann's mother played harp while in high school, but did not continue when she entered Mills College, the prestigious all-women's school in the foothills of Oakland, California. When she...