cloud collecting #53: Lara Somogyi

Happy to have Lara Somogyi on cloud collecting today surrounding her new release, a [time] patterned, out via Mercury KX this Friday. I have known Lara’s music since 2019 when she played a small show in LA’s Chinatown that Sarah Belle Reid, Carolina Eyck (and also my husband) performed at. Grateful to have had this chance to get to know Lara a little more through these questions. Her kindness, gratitude and love for her craft are as clear as day.

Lara Somogyi is a harpist and contemporary classical performer-composer, and is known for her curiosity in forging a new artistic identity for the harp. Born and raised in Kauai, Hawaii and New York, Lara is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and was awarded as an honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) for her contributions to her field.

With an unwavering dedication to sculpting a world of sonic exploration, Lara has seamlessly integrated electronics and pedal effects with her deeply classical roots, redefining the artistic possibilities of the harp. Cultivating an individual sound - she brings a fresh, passionate, modern sonority to the instrument.

Years of sculpting her sound and developing her set of contemporary expressions on the harp led her to write compositions for solo harp and electronics. Finding company and comfort in vast sonic expanses and exploration ushered her to a renewed clarity of expression and identity with the instrument. Her debut full-length album ! released under Decca Records’ modern classical imprint Mercury KX, stands as a testament to Lara’s innovative approach, seamlessly blending traditional harp with electronics and pedal effects. Praised by BBC 6’s Mary Anne Hobbs as “an artist who takes the harp into contemporary worlds,” Somogyi’s album was met with acclaim by Pitchfork for its innovation, and showcases Lara’s mastery in pushing the boundaries of the harp’s expressive capabilities.

In 2023, Lara released an “expanded” version of ! which featured new orchestral expansions, new music, and remixes, and in fall 2024, Lara released a new EP entitled blueprints, a reflection on life’s cycles—the way we lay the groundwork, make decisions, adapt to change, and eventually look back to see the design of it all. In 2025 she released désert, a collaboration with award-winning pianist/composer Jean-Michel Blais. The album emerged from a serendipitous encounter at Lara’s remote studio amidst the serene expanse of Joshua Tree. Entirely improvised, it captures the natural, organic interaction between the two artists, reflecting both their intuitive musical connection and the true essence of the moment in which they recorded it. Since its release in March 2025, the album has topped the Billboard Canadian Classical Charts, reached #10 on the Billboard US Classical Charts & Official UK Classical Charts and has received over 60 million streams across DSPs.

1. What is your relationship like with routine and your creativity? Do your days often look similar, or are they filled with variation, and how does this interplay with your craft?

This is a really great question, and something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I feel so much comfort and inspiration in motion and variation that I’ve recently tried to ensure I’m keeping some part of every day dedicated to that. Sometimes that means physically, sometimes musically -- I’ll go for really long drives, venture to a new café or walk somewhere I haven’t been before, move my harp to different areas of the studio, or swap the order of my pedals to experience a new sound combination.

The interplay between variety and motion really uplifts my creativity and creative output. If things begin to feel too routine, I can really feel that in my body and, therefore, in my art, and I start to experience a sense of stagnation. There’s something that happens in my brain when I experience something new or different from what I’m normally used to -- it unlocks something magical for me and opens up a new place that I love to sit in creatively.

2. What lessons live within your latest album, a [time] patterned? I believe that every project teaches us something. What did you take from the experience, and how did it differ from your previous projects?

This record began from a curiosity and an attempt to explore, understand, and process the passing of time. I wondered how moments slowly shift, repeat, dissolve, and transform us. Musically, I dove deep into time-based processing and discovered how it feels in our bodies when we disrupt time or rhythm, when we support it, or when we simply flow with it.

Creating this record unveiled that I process time through a sensory lens rather than literally, numerically, or even as a straight line. Time becomes marked by sensation, and the music naturally leaned into tactile form. The record is essentially a sonic diary of small musical portraits of time, exploring how music doesn’t simply measure time, but decorates it -- leaving emotional and sensory markers that shape how we experience our days.

Rather than thinking, “Oh, in 2023,” or “September last year,” I learned that I tend to remember time through sensory impressions instead: “the summer that smelled like cut grass and incense,” or “the month I heard the birch leaves in the wind.” Thinking this way feels more like portraits of lived time rather than thinking time is passing which I think brings me more comfort.

This album is definitely a bit different from my first record. On my previous record, I embarked to make every sound come directly from the harp and to shift the perspective and narrative of how the instrument itself could be experienced. It was an exploration of the uncharted sonic territories for me, that I could uncover within the harp. Through that process, I learned so much about the instrument’s expansive possibilities and its remarkable ability to produce sound in unconventional ways. I’m still learning from that album, and many of those discoveries naturally carried forward into the creation of a [time] patterned.

3. How do you cloud collect (connect to childlike wonder) in your creativity?

I love to let curiosity lead and to play with a sense of unstructured enchantment. Improvisation is a key element of my music and, to me, it feels free, exciting, and limitless -- akin to traveling through the kaleidoscope of imagination as a child. It brings me so much comfort to sometimes imagine making music as though it were an expansive summer day, or to reconnect with that pure, uninhibited sense of wonder we experience as children.

Working with effects pedals and electronics also allows me to play outside the harp’s typical sonic realms, which brings me an endless sense of joy, curiosity, and discovery.

***For all you LA folks, Lara has a live performance at Glassell Park Recreation Center on the evening of August 29th. More details here, it will be a beautiful evening!***

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