Alison Attar
Harpist Dr. Alison Attar specializes in both contemporary and historical music. A champion of new music, Alison performs regularly with numerous new music groups, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW, Contemporary Chamber Players (Contempo) and Milwaukee's Present Music. Dr. Attar is also a founding member of the new music quartet Pinotage, which features mezzo-soprano, flute, viola and harp. She debuted at Carnegie's Weil Hall in 1994 playing an evening of contemporary chamber music, and Alison has enjoyed working with a number of living composers, including Pierre Boulez, Henry Brant, George Crumb, Bernard Rands, and Augusta Reed Thomas, among others.
Highlights of Dr. Attar's pedal-harp career include the 1993-1996 and 2005-2006 cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, as well as performances with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Ballet, Skylight Opera Theatre, Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic Orchestra (FL) and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. She toured Taiwan with Chicago's Symphonic Pops Orchestra and currently serves as Principal Harpist for Arnold Rosner's Chicagoland Pops Orchestra.
Her interest in historical harps has led to performances in Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Edinburgh. Her solo and chamber music performances have been praised in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Classical Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall-Street Journal and The New Yorker. Dr. Attar holds a B.M., M.M., and D.M. in harp performance and a B.A. in Italian culture, all from Northwestern University. She can be heard on over a dozen recordings under the Mayapple, Albany, Hungaroton and Cedille labels, among others.
