Less than five feet tall, Tiffany Wong (10), with her feet clad in heels, grazes her fingers across her semi-grand harp for eight hours every weekend. Her height, though a small obstacle, does not hinder her, one out of five in the United States, from attending the World Harp Congress this July.

“Tiffany’s ‘passion’ for the harp, if you want to call it that, is a matter of dedication, sacrifice and devotion. She works extremely hard, practices diligently and takes her music seriously, ” Mrs. Linda Rollo, Tiffany’s harp instructor, said. “Beyond that, I would say that she takes every note she plays seriously, which is a sign of a true artist.”

The harp was not Tiffany’s first choice of instrument. She experimented with the piano and the clarinet before realizing her fondness for the instrument at the age of eight.

“At the time [my brother and I] were playing the piano. Since he was playing a woodwind instrument, I decided to try something similar, and I picked up the clarinet,” Tiffany said. “So I brought home a clarinet, and after a week or screeching and honking, my parents were like ‘Tiffany we should stop, and pick something else.’”

With a strong endurance, Tiffany worked through physical stress on her fingers and anxiousness of playing in front of an audience.

“I still think that getting over stage fright is something that people still do not get over because, even though, I’ve been playing for eight years, it’s still something that I struggle.” Tiffany said. “But something that helps me is that to focus on what you try to convey in the piece than getting everything right.”

When travelling to Hong Kong this summer, Tiffany will participate in harp conferences, study, and attend concerts by professional harpists. She will perform in a series of five master concerts in front of evaluators who will note her room for improvement.

“The component that I’m participating in is the Focus on Youth concerts, which is basically in every World Harp Congress,” Tiffany said. “They invite around 30 harpists from around the world to participate in a series of five master classes or concerts, and each of the performers gets feedback from not really judges, but people who evaluated your performance, telling you what you could have done better.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on February 21, 2017.