Performances + Events
Songwriter and harpist Elias Shane ’26 MM has cited “folk, chamber music, and avant-garde influences” as contributing to his sound. In his recently recorded Studio Session, he previewed his forthcoming, second album with performances of his songs “Westlands,” “Liaison,” “Forget,” and “All You’ll Be Is Song,” with cellist Chih-Yi Joy Chu ’26 GD and percussionist Yilin Chen ’26 MM. Shane’s debut album, therein lies the garden, was released in 2022. One track, “E-flat Song,” was aptly described by York Calling as “rich with lived detail and honest emotion.” Shane, who studies in NEC’s Contemporary Musical Arts Department, spoke with us about his chosen instrument, writing lyrics, singing, and more.
Q: You started playing harp in your first year in college. What instrument was the vehicle for your songwriting before that? (You’ve mentioned elsewhere an upright piano your family has or had.)
A: I mostly wrote on guitar, and sometimes piano, before I started playing the harp. I grew up in a musical family and have been singing since before I could talk, and I always would toy around on my family’s upright in our living room. Guitar became more of my main instrument in high school, when I started listening to a lot of ’60s/’70s folk and began to experiment with fingerpicking and open tunings — both of which I feel transferred to the harp quite naturally.
Q: What about the harp convinced you it was the ideal vehicle for your music? And how did you learn to play the instrument so relatively quickly?
A: I’ve always had a fascination with the instrument, since I was a kid. But I also had a tendency to pick up and drop hobbies pretty quickly, so I understand my mother not investing in that one right away …
I became more interested in the different things it could do in high school, when I started listening to harpists like Joanna Newsom, Alice Coltrane, and Zeena Parkins. When I began undergrad at SUNY Purchase, I found out there was a harp teacher there. As soon as I started lessons, I was like, “Oh my god, this is what I want to do all the time, always.” I really committed to learning it and was more diligent than I had ever been with anything. As I got better, it totally changed the way I thought about writing songs and opened up so many new musical doors for me in improvisation and composition. It felt like a vessel for all this pent-up creative energy I had.
Q: How and with what inspirations have you developed the lyric-writing aspect of your work? You mention Lydia Davis’s work in your Studio Session.
A: I really like words and have always been drawn to songwriters who have fun with words — Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, Regina Spektor … so when I started writing songs in middle and high school, it was partially just a practice in how I could craft words in a fun way. That remains one of the most satisfying and rewarding parts of songwriting to me. Lydia Davis is an author who is very creative with language and inspires my writing a lot. She writes super short stories, yet can convey more in a sentence or two than most writers can in a whole book. My song “Liaison” that we performed in the Studio Session is based off of one of her stories, and I’ve done other projects based on her work.
Most of my lyric writing starts from my annoyingly overactive inner monologue: I’ll have a thought that I like the sound of and jot it down in my Notes app. When I find an instrumental idea I like, I pull from those and expand from there.
Film is a huge inspiration for my music, in both songwriting and production. I really cherish the way a film can bring you into its world for its runtime; how your eyes become the camera when you go to a movie theater and the lights go down. I also am very inspired by what can be expressed in a film outside of plot and dialogue; details that really create the atmosphere for you to inhabit. Some directors that inspire my writing are Abbas Kiarostami, Celine Song, and Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Q: What have you learned from your peers in the Contemporary Musical Arts Department that informs your music and performances? How do you develop your improvisational skills?
A: Ah, so much. I’m just so consistently inspired by all my peers in CMA and their music. It feels like everyone is there because it’s the only place where they’re able to nurture their very specific thing. Being around that is just so creatively stimulating.
Developing my improvisational skills has also been very informed by playing and working with my classmates. Everyone has really expanded my mind to what improvisation can be, what it can express, and how universal it is. I try to integrate it into my practicing now the same way I treat technique and repertoire.
Q: How does collaboration nourish your music making?
A: Honestly, collaboration has really become a major part of my music-making since getting to NEC. I’ve been able to get more ensemble experience here than I’ve ever had — and like I said, just being around so many unique musicians and playing together and exchanging ideas gets me so inspired. Working with artists like Joy and Yi-Lin, who play in the Studio Session with me, and letting them bring their personal character to the songs just gives them a whole new life.
Q: Your musical storytelling is very emotive. How have you developed your vocal style?
A: Growing up in my family, we worshipped the great vocalists: Whitney, Mariah, Luther, Stevie, Aretha … so expressive, passionate vocals have always resonated with me. When I started developing more of my own personal taste in music, my idea of what that meant started to expand — the way Fiona Apple’s voice ranges from rasps and grunts to belts to delicate whispers, or how Björk sings from the deepest part of her being, or how Laura Marling will slip in and out of spoken word. By accessing all of these different parts of their voice, it felt like they were showing the wholeness of who they were and how they felt.
Despite my nightly manifestations, I do not have a voice like Mariah Carey or Björk. So developing my own vocal style has been a synthesis of my many inspirations, and applying it as the music needs. Playing songs live will also have a big part in feeling out how I want to sing them; seeing how I can pull the audience in and keep them engaged.
Q: What are you reading, listening to, and/or reading lately?
A: Continually obsessed with the latest Lily Allen album, West End Girl. Talk about musical storytelling! It feels like a movie of an album.
Been watching some Ingmar Bergman films for the first time in five or six years, and jeez, dude really knew how to make a film.
And listening to the masters of my new album quite a bit.
