ABOUT
Brooklyn-based harpist and recording artist Chelsea Lane has built a wide-ranging career spanning Broadway and opera pits, major orchestras, chamber ensembles, and contemporary music. She has performed with the New York City Ballet, American Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, and Czech Philharmonic, among others. Her Broadway credits include Wicked, Ragtime, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and Paradise Square, as well as the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes, where she has served as Principal Harp Co-chair.
Much of Lane’s recent work has focused on expanding the contemporary repertoire for harp. She is a founding member of Rule of Three, a flute, viola, and harp trio dedicated to creating new music for this distinctive combination of instruments. The ensemble has commissioned numerous new works and arrangements and presented them through music series at The Graduate Center, CUNY (“Music in Midtown”), Vassar College, and New York University, as well as through a three-concert development residency with Metropolis Ensemble in New York.
In 2022, Lane released Suspensions, her debut solo album, on Better Company Records. The album has garnered more than two million streams and brings together contemporary, minimalist-inspired works, newly commissioned music, and transcriptions to explore the theme of “suspensions,” both literal and figurative.
Lane currently teaches harp at the Prep Division of Mannes School of Music and has previously taught at Vassar College, Rowan University, the College of Staten Island, and Lehman College. Her doctoral research, The Feminine Harp as Feminist Tool: Early Professional Footing for Women in Mid-Twentieth-Century America, examines the harp’s history and cultural role and informs her teaching and programming. She holds a D.M.A. in Music Performance from The Graduate Center, CUNY, an M.M. in Harp Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and a B.A. in Music from Yale University, where she graduated magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.