MAKING BEAUTIFUL MUSIC TOGETHER

Reinagel and her daughter, flutist Sara Fluegge, have been joined in their performances by violinist Jennifer Horst, who took up the violin at the age of 5.

What began as a passing whim for a Jackson woman has become a consuming hobby that sees her traveling to St. Louis each week to learn to play an age-old and unique musical instrument.

Cheryl Reinagel said her newfound hobby got its start during a weekend trip to the St. Louis Science Center in 1991. On the way to the parking lot of the center, the family came upon a huge replica of a harp.

"It was fashioned of wire and steel," said Reinagel, "and it was placed there to demonstrate the sound of a harp as the wind blew through the wire strings. As I stood and listened to the sounds coming from the harp, an interest sparked in me that was quite puzzling initially.

"I remember saying, 'That would be interesting to play,' and we left," said Reinagel. "During the next few weeks, I recounted that moment at the science center as I gazed on that rustic harp. Because of these persistent thoughts, I began to wonder if God might be 'tapping me on the shoulder' or if this was just another whim of my own making."

Reinagel began calling friends and others trying to locate a musician who could give her harp lessons or point her in the right direction in obtaining a harp but to no avail. No one in the area seemed to know much about the instruments.

After a few more phone calls, a friend remembered a Sikeston woman, Mimi Allen, who played the harp.

"At the time, I didn't realize that I was calling the home of a world renowned harpist," laughed Reinagel. "But I called Mrs. Allen and I told her, 'I have this idea in my head and I don't know whether I'm crazy or whether it's just God's will but I want to learn to play the harp.'"

"She was so nice to me," Reinagel said of Allen. "She said, 'No, I don't think you're crazy,' and then she told me where I needed to go to get a rental harp and put me in contact with her daughter, Linda Keefer, who gave harp lessons."

In early summer of 1991, Reinagel placed her name on a waiting list for a rental harp with Lyon and Healy, a Chicago-based harpmaking firm and one of a very few in the world. So rare are the instruments, that it was not until November of 1991 that Reinagel was able to rent a harp.

Although she played clarinet in her high school's band and had five years of piano lessons as a girl, she had never before played a stringed instrument. Already knowing how to read sheet music was an advantage as a beginning harpist, but there was still much to learn. For the next year, Reinagel learned the basic techniques needed to properly play a harp.

"If I hadn't had any prior musical experience, I would never have learned to play the harp," the Jackson woman said. "I started out in much the same way a beginning piano player would, learning finger positioning and basic techniques and began getting callouses on my fingers."

Harpists actually pluck the 46 strings of a harp between three fingers and a thumb. Plucking the tightly-stretched strings is often painful for the beginner and, as is the case with guitar players, the active harp player develops callouses which protect his or her playing fingers.

After a year, health problems prevented Keefer from giving any further harp lessons leaving Reinagel to begin practicing on her own.

By the spring of 1992, Reinagel began to feel comfortable enough to think about performing with her daughter, Sara Fluegge, who by then had been playing the flute for about four years.

This was an experience for both of them.

"We were dealing with a situation where Sara was already an accomplished musician and I had just started," said Reinagel. Fluegge said the process was just a matter of growing accustomed to one another as musicians.

The mother-daughter duo's first performance was during Easter weekend of 1992 when they played at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Jackson.

Since then, the duo have performed on over 30 occasions including recent Christmas parties in homes, at local businesses and earlier this month at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg.

While their first performance may not have been top-notch, Fluegge feels they have progressed nicely over the past two years.

"Now we get compliments on how well we blend together," said Fluegge.

For the flutist, experience as a musician has allowed her to compensate for the idiosyncrasies of her mother's harp. Having the familiarity that comes from playing an instrument for several years allows Fluegge to tailor the sound of her flute to that of the harp when the harp's sound is flat because of high humidity or other factors.

Reinagel explained that each harp is handmade of wood that is very dry, having spent over a year in a special drying room to remove moisture. Being carved from wood which is so dry, the harp takes on moisture very easily. High humidity will often cause the wood to swell and "knock" the instrument as much as a full key out of tune.

Even in optimum conditions, the harp is not easy to keep in tune. Reinagel explained that anytime the instrument is moved, each of its 46 strings must be retuned to the proper key. This is no small feat.

"The harp is very temperamental and it takes a minimum of a half-hour to retune it," she said, adding that time-constraints before a performance often necessitate shortcuts, such as tuning only the strings she expects to play most during a performance.

Another of the trials of playing a harp, at least in Southeast Missouri, is the scarcity of harp parts. The closest outlet for parts is Chicago.

"Once I had a harp string break 15 minutes before we were leaving for a performance and I didn't have a replacement," the harpist remembered. "Luckily, only three strings have broken since I've had it."

Reinagel's relatives also suffer for her art. They are often called upon to help transport the instrument to and from performances or to loan a van for the transport itself.

The harpist said that although her harp is not of the larger variety -- it's known as a semi-grand harp, as opposed to the full-sized concert variety, known as a grand -- it is very awkward to move because of its large, triangular shape and fragile nature.

Relatives will get plenty of chances to help in the future, said Reinagel who hopes to perform in other venues in the near future, particularly since the mother-daughter duo has become a full-fledge ensemble with the addition of a young Jackson violinist.

A friend of Reinagel and Fluegge, Jennifer Horst, has joined the two and performed alongside them during the recent Altenburg performance.

It's not surprising that Horst has nearly nine years of experience as a violinist until you realize that she's only 14 years old.

Now an accomplished musician, Horst learned the very basic principles of violin playing while practicing at the age of five on a "violin" fashioned from a ruler and a Cracker Jacks box.

"I first saw a violinist on PBS and I thought, 'That's so cool; I'd like to try that,'" explained Horst.

She continued to express an interest in playing a violin and soon her parents caught on. They made the Cracker Jack violin in order to allow Horst to learn how to properly mount the instrument, use a bow and become familiar with the fingerboard. The Cracker Jack box was covered with brown paper and the 5 year old was told that if she learned to use the violin properly, she would be allowed to unwrap the box.

Not only was Horst treated to Cracker Jacks, she soon received her own violin, although it was a child's version made to one-eighth the dimensions of a full-sized instrument.

What makes Horst's violin playing even more surprising are the set backs she's suffered while trying to learn to play the instrument.

She first learned to play violin by the Suzuki method, which does not require students to learn to read sheet music. Instead, students learn by sound and repetition. After a few years of lessons, though, the area's only Suzuki instructor left Missouri, forcing Horst to learn to play the violin once again, this time by traditional methods. She suffered another setback of nearly 18 months when an instructor could not be found in the area, forcing Horst to practice at home and on her own.

Now that the three are together, they hope to perform on a regular basis.

Reinagel says the most enjoyable part of playing with the trio is playing for audiences in nursing homes and hospitals during the weeks prior to Christmas.

"Christmastime takes on a different meaning when you are inside the walls of a hospital or nursing home during the week before Christmas," she said. "One of the most memorable experiences was at The Lutheran Home (in Cape Girardeau) during the Christmas season of 1992.

"As we walked down the long hall to the exit," Reinagel continued,"a frail, quiet lady was being pushed in her wheelchair down the hall. She commented on our 'pretty dresses and we told her we had just finished a concert in the chapel. We saw the disappointment on her face as she explained that she had just finished getting ready to come and listen to us perform.

"Seeing that she was quite ill, we felt moved to play just one more song and walked back up the hall with her," the harpist remembered. "When I mentioned being only a beginning harpist, she told me she had recently started to take piano lessons and had to stop when she 'got the cancer.'

"I will never forget the peaceful look on her face as we played 'Silent Night' for her."