Jamey Turner: Turning a Glass of Water Into Something Beautiful, Literally

Jamey Turner knew it when he was six years old. He was the youngest one sitting around the dining table in a modest house in Lewistown, Montana. His father, an elementary school teacher by day and fiddler/singer by night, had gathered his barbershop quartet for dinner, and some of them began to have some acoustic fun with the glassware. “I remember it so clearly – everyone going around the table striking their glass for a different note, one by one,” said Turner, now 65 and living in Alexandria, Virginia. “Some people remember exactly where they were during historic moments – I remember this day when I was six like it was yesterday.”

Since his introduction to the acoustic sounds of water and glass, “glass harpist” Jamey Turner has become a renowned musician who’s performed across the world. While he specializes in all kinds of unique instruments, the unique sound created from glass and water has brought him from the Kennedy Center to the street corner, from The Tonight Show to state fairs. For more than half a century, Jamey Turner has literally turned a glass of water into something beautiful.

“I never saw myself making a career out of this – I had studied the humanities at the University of Colorado and practiced photography,” explained Turner. “It wasn’t until I joined in Army in 1969 and traveled across Europe when I really fell in love with performing the glass harp.” Indeed, it was the Army that had taken his interest to a new peak. He had the chance to play for crowd after crowd – and loved it.

“When I came home, I wrote to all sorts of places to perform – including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” said Turner. “Back then, people actually returned your mail and by 1969 I found myself in Burbank, CA playing water and glass in front of millions of viewers.” It was unique, and unique enough for Carson to bring Turner back three more times throughout the years. From there, it was the White House Easter Egg Roll, the National Symphony Orchestra, NPR’s All Things Considered, and countless other venues that had taken his sounds of water and glass to audiences across the country and the world.

To Turner, water became a lifeline that was different from everyone else. When most people take clean water for granted, Turner recognized that it’s a luxury to say “it’s just a glass of water.” “When I saw what UNICEF was doing with the TAP Project here in Washington, DC and across the country, it struck a chord with me,” said Turner. “It’s so hard to get people excited about water. But for one dollar given to this project to be able to give a child 40 days of clean drinking water is simply amazing. When I heard that, I wanted to get involved in any way possible.”

Jamey Turner will be performing live at the opening reception for Tap DC’s art exhibition at the Pepco Edison Gallery, 702 8th Street NW on March 24 from 6pm-9pm.