Acacia Lyra Bio
Janine Dudding
Janine's love of Celtic music started at an early age at her Grandmother's knee as she listened to the stories and music of times past in Ireland. She hails from Toronto where she first fell in love with the beautiful sound of the Celtic harp, and began to study with Nora Bumanis in the mid-seventies.
A move to Whitehorse, Yukon in the late seventies provided a wide open and colourful landscape in which to develop her own style and gift for arranging tunes for the harp and voice. In Yukon Janine performed at the Farrago, Dawson City and Frostbite Folk Festivals.
Janine also lived several years in Sri Lanka where she played as a guest with the Colombo Philharmonic Orchestra in the production of Biset's Carmen.
On returning to Canada Janine settled in Ottawa, where she now studies with the accomplished harpist and performer Lucile Brais Hildesheim.
Janine was an active member and performer in the Ottawa Harp Choir, and here the collaboration with Susan was born.
Susan Sweeney Hermon
Susan Sweeney Hermon began learning to play the Celtic harp once her children could get to school and back on their own. She studied with Joanne Meis and Mary Muckle in Ottawa, focusing on the music closest to her heart - tunes from the Celtic lands of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany and Galicia.
She is not just a 'Celtoid' however. Multilingual and well-travelled, Susan is a lover of lore - stories and songs that grow out of many countries' soil, like beautiful perennials, from one generation to another.
Over the years Susan has collaborated with storytellers, in a blending of ancient aires and tales. She has brought her harp into hospitals, schools, retirement residences and community halls, and has provided musical background at weddings and receptions, including events at the Speaker of the Senate on Parliament Hill, and the Prime Minister's residence.
She was a founding member of the Ottawa Harp Choir, an ensemble of ten Celtic harps, which performed in the National Capital Region for over a decade.
Susan has produced a number of concerts featuring other harpists and singers, and also presents a series of house concerts in wintertime, using music in her home to raise donations for those who have no home.
