Angela Durán

Although no one in her immediate family pursued music professionally, music was always present at home: her grandfather played the violin, her father built a broad music collection, and her mother sang beautifully while tending to household chores and putting the children to sleep. Naturally driven and an accomplished student, Angela began exploring dance and music early on. By fourth grade, she had joined her school's marching band as its lead bell lyre player. As the regional hub of Llanera music, Villavicencio filled her upbringing with the vibrant rhythms of the harp, cuatro, and maracas—the quintessential sound of the plains of Colombia and Venezuela. Attending public school, Angela took advantage of every opportunity available despite limited resources for extracurricular programs. During middle school, she learned the cuatro, joined a folkloric dance troupe, and sang at school functions.

Recognizing Angela’s innate musical capability, her grandmother gifted her a Llanera harp for her fifteenth birthday. Up until that point, Angela spent long afternoons singing along to her father's records of classical and Colombian music, though owning or playing a harp had never occurred to her. Soon after receiving the instrument, she enrolled in lessons at a local music school and quickly learned to play.

Two years later, Angela relocated to Bogotá to live with her grandparents after gaining admission to the economics program at Los Andes University. This move meant leaving behind her hometown, family, friends, and musical instruments. Adapting to college life proved challenging, forcing music to take a backseat. By her second year, despite her father advising her to pursue something fun and her own enduring love for music, she decided to follow in his footsteps and transferred to the engineering school.

In her third year, her determined grandmother arranged to have Angela’s harp brought to Bogotá and hired a local harpist to provide weekly Llanera harp lessons for a year. During this time, Angela also joined the University Choir, began a music minor, and toured Europe with the Choir, where she sang and accompanied a song on her Cuatro. After the tour, she formed a Llanera music ensemble with a fellow engineering student on the Cuatro and a choir vocalist, performing together at the university plaza.

She later had the privilege of studying harp under Maestro Dario Robayo, though life soon grew complicated, and her instrument went silent once more for several years.

In 2019, while awaiting a US work permit for her husband's job, Angela and her family relocated to Canada. There, she enrolled in a Music Therapy Foundations program, which was subsequently interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and their eventual move to Durham, North Carolina.

Now settled in Durham with her family, Angela, a huge fan of Larry & Joe, met Larry, who sold her the traveling harp she uses in Arpa Nova. A chance meeting with Maestro Ramón Brito followed, and a year later, the planets aligned and Arpa Nova Project was born. Outside of her music with Arpa Nova, Angela spends her time homeschooling her child, developing her DanceToMe.com project, and supporting parents navigating Autism.