About The Artists

With imagery drawn from the fire and light of ancient Celtic traditions, and from the color and myth of the cycles of the earth, Spookytree creates a tapestry of experience as shining as an illuminated manuscript. Narrative, folk hymns, whimsical children's verse, and chants intertwine like roots of a great tree to carry the audience to a village harvest festival or a midwinter ceilidh, a moonlit northern coast or dawn on a hillside.  Musically, Debra and Jane weave percussive rhythms with close harmonies, sonorous chords with lighthearted improvisations.  The unique voices of their magnificent nylon and wire-strung harps sing and harmonize as their arrangements evoke and reinterpret the spirit of ancient melodies.

Debra Knodel's musical journey began as the daughter of a high school principal who moonlighted as a hotel pianist in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  She began piano lessons at an early age, and has studied violin and voice.  In college she took a semester of pedal harp, purchasing her first Celtic harp soon after.  A resident of Alaska for several years, Debra settled in the San Francisco Bay Area at a time when the folk harp revival was achieving momentum and where many of the innovations in harp design and performance style were occurring.  She began performing in 1982. Debra creates all the cover artwork for the duo's albums, and has produced cover artwork for several other recording artists as well.

Jane Valencia began as a classical musician, performing oboe in the California Youth Symphony and various honor ensembles.  In college she branched out into early music, singing in a collegium musican and studying music history. Inspired by several children's fantasy books that featured Celtic harps, Jane acted on her fascination with the instrument after spending half a year in Wales studying medieval Welsh bardic poetry.  She bought her first harp in 1987 and began composing soon after.  She released her first solo album, RoseGarden, in Spring 2000.

Known early in their duo history as Spookytree, Debra and Jane performed and recorded as Knodel & Valencia from 1992 to 1998.  Their first album The Harpers' Masque (1992) was hailed as "rare, out-there-on-the-new-horizon harp music".  Debra and Jane soon began composing lyrics that suffused landscapes and images from childhood, folklore, and the here-and-now with both poetic vision and playfulness.  In 1995 Debra and Jane drew from the wellspring of ancient harper tradition, and  realized their dream of combining art, narrative, myth, nature, and song into their concert performances. Their second album, Forest, released in 1996, was the culmination of this daring venture.

Having moved to a small forested island in the Pacific Northwest Debra and Jane resumed their original name,
Spookytree.   This year they released a winter season album, On A Snowy Eve, with harp and flute duo, Silverwood.  As Spookytree Debra and Jane have set forth once more to share their "music without borders" and the message that individuals close to the land have always understood: the the earth has songs for us if we will but listen.