Tara Viscardi

Hailing from the Beara Peninsula in the South-West of Ireland, Tara Viscardi is an Irish traditional, classical and baroque harpist. Selected as a 2024 UK Harp Association Emerging Artist and first prize winner of the 2021 London Camac Harp Competition, Tara has performed and recorded in venues including Wigmore Hall, Abbey Road Studios, the Irish Cultural Centre, the London Irish Centre, the Irish Embassy London, Áras an Uachtaráin, the National Concert Hall Dublin and the Mansion House London. She has been featured at festivals including the 2023 Cairde na Cruite International Festival for Irish Harp,2020/21/23 Bloomsbury Festival, 13th World Harp Congress Hong Kong, 2021 Harp on Wight International Festival, Blackwater Valley Opera Festival and the 2023 Wales International Harp Festival, where she was a prize winner in the World Music Competition.She has performed for President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins and Mrs Sabina Higgins, HM King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Hillsborough Castle as well as for An Taoiseach and An Tánaiste upon their visits to London.

Tara was a recipient of the 2022 Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award, which enabled her to commence studies in the Italian baroque triple harp with Dr Siobhán Armstrong, and was featured at the 14th World Harp Congress, Cardiff performing her original compositions for traditional harp and flute paired with chamber music by 19th and 20th century female composers, generously supported by Culture Ireland. In 2023, she released an EP ‘Uncovered Roots’ with saxophonist Robert Finegan which presents folk music from the UK and Ireland in different contexts and will release her Debut Album ‘Beara’ in April 2024, where she’s joined by flautist Robert Harvey for her own compositions paired with music written and collected on the Beara Peninsula since the 18th century.

A graduate of the Royal College of Music, Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado Milan and TU Dublin Conservatoire, she holds a Master of Music in Performance (Distinction), Postgraduate Diploma in Harp Performance and a Bachelor of Music in Performance (Honours). Passionate about outreach and education, she is Artistic Administrator for Irish Heritage, the harp teacher at Junior King’s School Canterbury and the harp tutor at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith. In 2021, Tara’s early music/folk group Nobody’s Jig held the Wigmore Learning/Royal Academy of Music Fellowship, delivering workshops and performances as part of the Wigmore Learning outreach programme.

Tara plays a beautiful Killarney Harp hand-crafted for her by Tim O’ Carroll in her native Co. Kerry, a Nuovolone Italian baroque triple harp handmade by Claus Hüttel in Germany and a Salvi concert harp. She is extremely grateful for the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, Kerry Country Council Arts, the Royal College of Music, Irish Heritage, Michael and Gianni Allen-Buckley, Carolyn Galloway, Martin Clarke, Goodenough College and her family towards her studies, development and the purchase of instruments.