Melissa Achten – Past Concerts

Melissa Achten is a Los Angeles-based harpist focused on experimentation and immersive musical ritual. Her performances directly engage with the listener, blurring the relationship between bodies, instruments, and sound to destabilize and thereby reveal hidden meaning. Within carefully conjured atmospheres, she explores the nuances of surrealism, fantasy, mythology, and the occult and what these say about the human condition. In her hands, the harp is untangled from convention and remade as a divining tool for channeling work that is diaristic, intimate, and cathartic. Drawn to interdisciplinary form, Melissa frequently collaborates with performers, composers, and other artists to realize their work and her own.