Laura Sherman

Laura Sherman is a Miami-based harpist with extensive experience in classical, popular and commercial music. In 2019, Laura relocated to Miami from New York City, where she was a popular performer, teacher, writer and editor for thirty-four years, including fifteen years as the original harpist with the Broadway production of "Wicked." 

 

A versatile and well-traveled musician, Laura has performed, toured and/or recorded with such diverse artists as Barbra Streisand, Jewel, Meredith Monk, Andrea Bocelli, Ray Charles, Luciano Pavarotti, Marvin Hamlisch, Jon Faddis, James Galway, and Joshua Bell. Featured on WNYC's "Sound Check," "The CBS Sunday Morning Show," "The Today Show," and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” she has performed in many of the great concert halls in New York City and Europe. Tours with three Broadway shows have taken her around the world, with extended stays in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Munich, Hamburg, Zurich, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand and twenty-six cities in Japan. She is also featured on the Broadway cast recordings of “Wicked” and “Hamilton,” as well as a number of films. She is also a voting member of the Recording Academy’s Grammy Awards since 2020 and has played on two Grammy-award winning recordings, as well as one Grammy-nominated recording.

 

In 2012, Laura founded Gotham Harp Publishing, a harp music publishing company specializing in quality transcriptions of early music and works by contemporary composer. As a writer and editor, she served as the Interim Editor of The American Harp Journal for three issues (Summer 2017, Winter 2018, and Summer 2020) and her articles have appeared in Musical America, the World Harp Congress Review, the Historical Harp Society’s Bulletin, the Harp Column magazine, and The American Harp Journal.

 

Dr. Sherman's life-long love of Johann Sebastian Bach's music inspired her to study with Rosalyn Tureck at her Bach Research Institute in Oxford, England. The end results, critical performance editions for harp of the complete Lute Suites by Bach, became her doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan and were published in June 2012 by Gotham Harp Publishing. 

 

Dr. Sherman has given lecture-recitals on the topic at the American Harp Society's 2012 Conference in New York City and 2016 Conference in Atlanta and at the World Harp Congress in Prague, Czech Republic in 1999 and Sydney, Australia in 2014. She was the Artistic Director co-chair, with Cheryl Dungan Cunningham, of the American Harp Society's 2020/2022 National Conference in Orlando, Florida, which has been postponed to June 2024. She has been invited to give a world premiere performance of Charles Norman Mason’s “Coconut Grove” work for solo harp and Miami sound scapes, as well as a masterclass in playing J.S. Bach’s music on the pedal harp at the 2024 AHS Conference in Orlando.

 

In addition to teaching privately and on Zoom, Dr. Sherman served as the lecturer in harp, music theory and chamber music at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami (2019-2023); as the assistant professor of harp and Bach studies at Louisiana State University (1999-2000) and as an adjunct harp and music studies instructor at Hunter College in Manhattan (2000-2003). She has four degrees, three in harp performance (Queens College/CUNY, undergraduate; Yale University School of Music, master's; University of Michigan, DMA) and a second master's, in music theory, from the University of Michigan. She was invited to be a judge at the two most recent American Harp Society National Competitions.

 

She has been featured in the the Harp Column magazine, and on their podcast series; on the Frost Sessions podcast series, and the Life in the Pit podcast series; as well as in Allegro, the official publication of Local 802, American Federation of Musicians. She recently was invite to give presentations about her Bach work on the harp for the Atlanta Harp Center’s “Hangin’ with the Harp” series, as well as the “Beauty of the Harp Series curated by harpist, Merynda Adams.