Grace Wepner Ludtke sits amid a forest of harps, her long fingers elegantly plucking red and black strings. She’s the one with the flowing blonde hair, her locks a shade or two darker than the blond wood that’s angled against her right shoulder. Her hands gesture broadly as they flutter about the instrument, telling a story in song.

The North Carolina Harp Ensemble is assembled inside a cavernous music room at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, rehearsing compositions like “Venezolana,” by Cuban-born harpist Alfredo Rolando Ortiz, for a spring concert at First Presbyterian Church in Burlington. Grace cofounded the ensemble in 2010 along with her mentor Jacquelyn Bartlett, professor of harp at UNCSA’s School of Music. The inspiration for forming the group came from Grace’s participation as a teenager in a gathering of harpists in Charlotte.

A performance tour during college took Grace to Harlaxton Manor in England, where she met her future husband, Tim. “If it hadn’t been for the harp,” she says, “I wouldn’t have met him, and our children wouldn’t be here.” photograph by Jerry Wolford & Scott Muthersbaugh

“Playing harp is an isolating experience,” she says. “You’re alone in a practice room.” Being part of an ensemble gave her the opportunity to meet fellow lonely harpists. “After I finished college,” she says, “I wanted to nurture the creative spirit in others, give people the tools and opportunities to explore their own potential.”

Heading up the NC Harp Ensemble is just one of many steps on a journey that’s taken the 40-year-old Newton native from Carnegie Hall to Baroque composer George Frideric Handel’s home church in London. Along the way, she’s lived up to her first name, earning a reputation as a calm and patient teacher and a passionate performer — a harpist with heart.

“I think Grace was destined to play the harp,” says Tracy Ralston, a senior member of the ensemble, “because they’re good for each other.”

• • •

For Grace, It all started with a picture book. She was 9 years old and on a shopping trip with her mother, Anne Abernethy Wepner. While her mom looked around for new windows for their home, young Grace parked herself in a play area that the store provided for children. There, she discovered a book about a group of small-town musicians. She spotted a picture of a woman delicately plucking the strings of a harp, took it to her mother, and said, “I want to play this.”

The problem: Where to find a harp and a teacher in Catawba County? Fortunately, Grace’s grandmother Raenelle Bolick Abernethy served on the board of the Hickory-based Western Piedmont Symphony. Raenelle — “Mama Nelle,” to her grandchildren — put Grace’s parents in touch with Western Piedmont’s harpist, Helen Rifas, who helped the child take the first steps toward her career goal. Earlier piano lessons had given Grace a head start. She could already read music, and she adapted to the new instrument quickly.

The NC Harp Ensemble regularly rehearses for the two concerts it performs each year. That’s Grace at top left, barely visible behind her towering instrument. photograph by Jerry Wolford & Scott Muthersbaugh

As a teen, Grace began participating in local beauty pageants, playing harp as her talent. Her younger cousin, Rose Abernethy, remembers attending the events. “She would play the harp onstage, and I was just mesmerized,” says Abernethy, now a fellow member of the NC Harp Ensemble. “I thought, ‘Man, I would love to do that; I would love to be like Grace,’ because she brought beauty and art together as one.”

But tragedy soon struck the family. Grace was 15 years old when her beloved and supportive Mama Nelle died unexpectedly. She was asked to play her harp at the memorial service. It would be the most important performance of her young life.

• • •

The ornate wooden columns and arches of the Corinth Reformed United Church of Christ in Hickory towered above Grace as she strummed and plucked her instrument, facing a sea of somber faces. She chose to perform an ancient Irish hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” its haunting, understated melody amplifying the emotions that flowed through the standing-room-only crowd. After completing the song, she crossed the black slate floor to rejoin her family.

“I remember my heels clicking as I walked back to the pew,” she says. “I realized then that there’s more to this music than what I’d been doing. It was the first time that it felt like I moved an audience.”

“I remember my heels clicking as I walked back to the pews. It was the first time that it felt like I moved an audience.”

In her earlier years as a harpist, Grace mostly played in churches and retirement homes, choosing pieces that she thought would please those audiences. She had a visceral relationship with her instrument. “I loved the sound, the vibration, the squeezing of strings,” she says. “It’s like giving someone a warm hug. It felt romantic. Call it a friendship, a connection with the harp — the way it felt and sounded resonated with me.”

After the memorial service, the teen began exploring new aspects of her instrument through Bartlett, her second teacher, who’s taught at universities from Duke to Appalachian State. Bartlett helped Grace develop a more serious approach to the harp and encouraged her to try more challenging pieces than the ones she played for folks back home. “Up until that point, I was just kind of in fairyland,” Grace says. “Working with Jackie involved discipline, focus, and a newfound devotion to the craft — honoring the composer, being faithful to their ideas, but also making it your own.”

• • •

The elegant lines of Grace’s harp suit her well, from the ornate carvings that adorn its pillar to the dramatic swoop of its shoulder, the top piece that supports the strings. A foot pedal allows her to play sharps and flats, approximating the range and capacity of a grand piano. “I like to think of the harp as a ballet, a kind of dance of the fingers,” she says. “And the feet are involved, too. Playing the harp is a full-body experience. You’re using your hands, your arms, your feet, your mind.”

Grace has never stopped striving or exploring. After earning her bachelor’s degree in music from Converse University in South Carolina, she continued her studies, getting a master’s in social work from Winthrop University in 2010. Then, years later, while pregnant with her fourth child, she returned for a second master’s, in harp performance, from UNCSA. She didn’t let swollen feet from her pregnancy stand in her way; instead, Grace performed her master’s recital barefoot.

“I like to think of the harp as a ballet, a kind of dance of the fingers.”

These days, Grace teaches at Guilford College and UNCSA, and performs with both the harp ensemble and Sono Auros, a chamber-music trio. But she’s perhaps most proud of the young people she mentors. One of the ensemble’s earliest members was a middle schooler from Kernersville: Today, Staff Sgt. Taylor Fleshman performs with the President’s Own U.S. Marine Band. A current member, Daya Asokan, began taking lessons from Grace at age 5. “I thought she was really pretty, and I felt like the harp was pretty,” says Asokan, now a high school senior at UNCSA. “She’s like a little angel. I want to be like that.”

When Grace was young, her grandmother was in the room one day when she was practicing. A call came in, and the woman on the other end was so moved by the music that she pondered to Mama Nelle whether she’d died and gone to heaven. Now, three decades into a career that began when Grace was in elementary school, she continues to play the instrument of the angels, adding grace notes to the lives of her audiences, colleagues, students, and friends — and the grandmother who nurtured her gift of music.