My name is Anna Kate Mackle, and I am thrilled to be one of the recipients of a Professional Artist Grant from Creative Pinellas for 2023. I am humbled and amazed by the talent of all the artists in this community who received grants this year, and grateful an organization like Creative Pinellas exists to help support local art and artists.
I am a professional classical musician who plays the harp, and I moved to St. Petersburg over 20 years ago after winning a national audition to become the principal harpist of The Florida Orchestra. I had been the principal harpist of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach prior to that, and before that I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in harp performance from Baldwin-Wallace University and the Cleveland Institute of Music. I was born in New York City and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut and Westfield, New Jersey.
In my spare time I love to read and travel, and I live with my husband of almost 20 years, my daughter, who is in the IB program at St. Petersburg High School, and three cats named Brian, Opie, and Steve.
My husband is also a professional musician who plays in The Florida Orchestra, as the principal percussionist. In 2018 we decided to approach a composer whose music we like about writing a piece of music for harp and percussion that we could play together, and we discovered that we love playing chamber music together. We decided to start commissioning more music from composers we admire, and formed a chamber group called the Mackle Shaw Duo. So far we have commissioned five new pieces, from composers Mattea Williams, Michael Ippolito, Daniel Black, Nathan Daughtrey, and The Honourable Elizabeth A. Baker. We are really enjoying getting to perform new music and supporting living composers, and this generous grant from Creative Pinellas will allow us to commission and perform even more works in the future.
More updates to come soon!
