Hi and Welcome back to Max’s Blues Harp Newsletter! We trust you’ve all been keeping safe and well during these times.
This time we feature Harmonica Legend Christelle Berthon. Never heard of her? Please read on!
Our new Facebook group under the new name “Harmonica Essentials Group” is steadily growing… we invite you to join and share your experiences and have a chat.
Please continue to stay safe and healthy!
HARMONICA LEGEND – CHRISTELLE BERTHON
We’re featuring Christelle Berthon in this issue. Never heard of her? That’s understandable as she doesn’t appear at many festivals in the Southern Hemisphere and lives mainly in France.
She mainly makes YouTube presentations, we’ll cover that shortly.
Her phrasing and style is heart-wrenching at times, when she plays a blues she becomes part of it.
Christelle started playing music on a recorder at four years of age where she was born in the town of Chateauroux which is in the centre of France. She played along with the radio and that gave her a wide experience with different kinds of music from Pop to Bach and more. At 14 she joined a popular folk-pop band. She played and studied Oboe for four years and at age 24, touring in Ireland, she discovered the Harmonica and like me, fell in love with it.
Christelle is now known as The Harp Queen, when you hear her I’m sure you’II agree. The Channel has over 90 thousand subscribers, including our team. She covers a wide range of styles, Blues, Celtic and Jazz.
To play all these styles, she has mastered ‘Overbending’ … a technique that means she can play the Chromatic Scale on the Diatonic Blues Harp. Overbending is bending notes by Blowing, not just drawing the Blue Notes. So with it you can play in any key on a ‘C’ Harp, like Howard Levy.
She tours Europe and soon America. She went to Sydney, Australia, unannounced recently and over stayed her visa, so we probably won’t be seeing her Down Under for a while. However, her latest album ‘Breathe To Me’ is available.
Christelle Berthon is an official endorser of the Dannecker Harmonicas, they are made in England by Antony Dannecker, here’s his Website.
We’d love to welcome you to join the Max’s Blues Harmonica Club Facebook group – which we recently renamed “Harmonica Essentials Group”. Get the opportunity to share your thoughts with other Blues Club members and ask Max as many questions as you like. Join the group by visiting the link below:
Max’s first book continues to get great feedback … It’s full of easy ways to get you rolling! Its got Great Examples of Blues Playing plus several Video links to see how it’s done.
Click on the cover to get your personal copy!
Look out in December for our new books on Chromatic Blues Harmonica and Improvising.