“I didn’t choose the harp. The harp chose me,” says Marianne Goodland, our featured performer on the Friday, Feb. 2 live Take 10 during the noon hour on the Gazette News Facebook platform. Goodland has played the harp for 40 years and has been mesmerized by the instrument since the beginning, “The minute I sat down to play the harp for the first time, I felt it was home. It was what I was meant to do.”

You may recognize Goodland’s name from her harp playing at the Colorado Scottish and Irish festivals, and the Renaissance Festival. She is also a reporter for the Gazette’s sister publication, Coloradopolitics.com.

Her infatuation for the harp is part of a tragic chapter in her life, “I went through college and switched to harp from viola. I took to it so well. I did my senior recital in college with it. The harp I was using belonged to my harp teacher. The week of the recital was traumatic for me. My ex-boyfriend who is also the father of our child was killed in a car accident during that week. I had all these emotions swirling around in that seven-day period, but decided to participate in the recital. After the performance, the teacher took back her harp and I didn’t play the harp for 10 years.”

During that decade, Goodland remembers hearing the song “Clair de Lune” played on a harp. She thought it was so beautiful and vowed that if she ever did play again, she would master that song. After moving with her daughter to Colorado, Goodland took harp lessons and then learned that song. She says it was one of the happiest days in her life.

Her love for her harp is always evident because she wears a harp necklace, “It’s always a reminder of what waits for me at home.” As she covers the Colorado General Assembly as a reporter, she has been invited to play her harp for lawmakers.

Goodland’s Take 10 performance will show off her prowess with Celtic music, which she says has been a staple in her repertoire for a quarter of a century.

At the Gazette, we not only talk the talk about helping southern Colorado entertainment prosper and grow by showcasing it, and Take 10 is an example of getting it done. If you are someone like Goodland who has a performing skill you would like to show off in front of thousands of our Facebook family, email me at eric.singer@gazette.com. Whatever you do, be that as a musician, magician, poet, playwright, juggler, is what I want to showcase on a future Take 10 from the Gazette’s downtown Colorado Springs studio.