Harpist Yukimo Endo Schlaffer Performs with Dallas Chamber Symphony

Yukimo Endo Schlaffer has heard the piccolo question so many times she could answer it in her sleep.

The Tokyo-born harpist brings her large, heart-shaped instrument to Moody Performance Hall on April 21 as featured soloist with the Dallas Chamber Symphony, performing Claude Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane alongside Henryk Górecki’s Three Pieces in Old Style and Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen. It’s a program that asks a lot of its performers, and Endo Schlaffer wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I love the harp. So, of course, no regret for that, but still, moving the harp is hard,” she said.

Moving it is one thing. Making it dance is another.

Debussy wrote Danse sacrée et danse profane in 1904, and the work toggles between two emotional worlds in just under ten minutes, demanding a soloist who can shift from austere reverence to sensuous release without losing the thread. The piece pairs against Górecki’s folk-inflected Three Pieces and Strauss’ deeply personal Metamorphosen, a 1945 meditation on loss and transformation, giving the April 21 program a weight that extends well past the final note.

Endo Schlaffer’s path to this Moody Performance Hall stage crosses three continents and roughly three decades of disciplined work. She started studying music theory and piano at age three, inside a musical family in Japan that had strong opinions about wrong notes.

“Growing up in the musician’s family is very tough because when I’m practicing, whether they’re making dinner or whatever the situation, they’re going to say, ‘You have to play one more time, or that note is wrong,’” Endo Schlaffer said. “Now I appreciate that a lot, because you don’t really get that usually. And it toughened me up, and it also really educated me a lot.”

She picked up the harp at nine. Her first teacher, Ayako Shinozaki, shaped everything that followed.

“She is like my second mother,” Endo Schlaffer told NBC DFW. “She was the one who made my base with all the technique and artistry. I really appreciate her.”

After earning her bachelor’s degree from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Endo Schlaffer faced a fork: Paris Conservatory or Juilliard. She chose New York, spending three years studying under Nancy Allen before earning her master’s degree.

She wasn’t ready to go home.

“I really don’t know anything. I learned, I studied, but I did not really feel I received fully all the benefits that U.S. can offer,” Endo Schlaffer said.

That hunger pushed her to Chicago, where she joined the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training program of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, studying under Sarah Bullen. A couple of years later she auditioned for New World Symphony and served as its principal harpist from 2001 to 2004, still pressing deeper into American musical culture.

The ambition makes sense for someone who committed to the harp at a music-focused high school when most teenagers were still figuring out what they wanted for lunch. This wasn’t a casual choice. It was a vocation, pursued with the methodical intensity of someone who practiced through family dinners and didn’t resent a word of the correction.

Dallas audiences who catch the April 21 performance will get the full picture: the technique Shinozaki built, the interpretive depth Nancy Allen and Sarah Bullen added, and the years of orchestral work that turned a gifted student into a soloist who can carry a Debussy concertante piece without making it feel like a showcase.

Moody Performance Hall sits at 2520 Flora Street in the Arts District. Tickets are available through the Dallas Chamber Symphony’s website.