Rita Costanzi
“An Artist of immense gifts”
Vancouver Sun
Through her depth of expression as an internationally recognized harp soloist, actor, writer and teacher, Rita Costanzi, in the words of Celtic Author, Treasa O’Driscoll, “bears the mark of the true artist whose task it is to rise above the tumult of the times. A force of truth and love in herself and a musician of exceptional accomplishment, her playing never fails to touch the souls of listeners in deep and unexpected ways.”
Winner of The 2020 Hershey Felder Presents Arts Prize Competition, Costanzi’s short documentary film “Moonlight in the Bronx”, captivated viewers around the world with its moving, powerful and timely memorial to Ludwig van Beethoven and the victims of the Corona Virus. Heralded as "A Hymn to New York" – it conveys, with profundity and grace, a vital message for our times in its portrayal of Beethoven’s isolation through deafness, the world’s through Covid-19 and her own, through divorce. Costanzi wrote, directed and performed her original script, reflecting yet again her “warmth, conviction and exquisite virtuosity.”
The 2021 Sunflower Festival in Topeka, Kansas, hosted the stunning World Premiere of Costanzi’s Theater Piece – Woman On A Ledge – by Hershey Felder, with the support of a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts. Bringing her life story to the stage in this groundbreaking, powerful hybrid of solo harp music and theatrical performance, Woman On A Ledge expresses the female musician’s fraught and complex life experience with its conflicts, devotion, love and loss. It will be mounted Off-Off Broadway November 7 to 24, 2024 in a new, reimagined staging by Director, Lissa Moira.
Since relocating to New York City in 2007, Costanzi has collaborated with Director, Arthur Masella, long-time Associate of Hal Prince, on an award winning one-woman show which was featured at The United Solo Theater Festival in New York City, The Ottawa International Festival and at The World Harp Congress in Sydney. An acclaimed international soloist and teacher, Costanzi has performed and given Master Classes in North and South America, Europe and Canada. Her latest CD with renowned oboist, Alex Klein, entitled “Amoroso,” on the Navona Label - released in 2023, has received over one million streams.
Ms. Costanzi’s training began at an early age under the guidance of her father, the noted violist Francis Tursi, and harpist Eileen Malone. After graduating from the Eastman School of Music with Highest Distinction and the Performer’s Certificate, she furthered her studies with Bernard Zighera, Marcel Grandjany, and in France on an ITT International Fellowship with Jacqueline Borot. She was twice winner of the American Harp Society’s National Competition and recipient of the Lily Laskine Award for the most outstanding solo harp recital.
The Strings of My Heart
The Strings of My Heart by Rita Costanzi is a luminous and deeply moving memoir that reads like music itself—measured, resonant, and profoundly intimate. Structured as forty-seven vignettes, each corresponding to a string on her Concert Grand Harp, the book becomes both a literary and spiritual composition, where every chapter vibrates with memory, emotion, and meaning.
Costanzi’s life unfolds not merely as a chronicle of artistic achievement, but as a courageous exploration of what it means to live as a woman devoted to art while navigating the demanding roles of daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, mystic, and divorcée. Her honesty is disarming. She does not romanticize the sacrifices required of an artist’s life; instead, she invites readers into the quiet, often painful tensions between creative calling and familial responsibility. In doing so, she gives voice to countless women who have felt torn between duty and destiny.
What makes this memoir exceptional is its spiritual depth. Costanzi’s harp is not just an instrument—it is a vessel of healing. Whether performing in grand concert halls or offering solace at the bedside of the dying, her music becomes an act of service, a bridge between the visible and the unseen. The prose mirrors this purpose: gentle yet powerful, reflective yet transformative. Each vignette feels like a note sustained long enough to touch the reader’s own heart.
As educator Larry Johnson so aptly notes in the Afterword, these narratives awaken personal memories, carrying readers on resonant currents of their own lived experiences. That is the book’s quiet triumph—it does not merely tell Costanzi’s story; it invites readers to listen to their own.
The Strings of My Heart is more than a memoir. It is a meditation on art as vocation, music as ministry, and vulnerability as strength. Graceful, soulful, and unforgettable, this book will resonate with musicians, artists, caregivers, and anyone who believes that beauty can heal a fractured world.
Citi of Books Literary Scouts
January, 2025