Harpist records her highest quality CD

Like a mazurka featured on the album, "A Light in the Forest" puts a forceful accent in the progression of Anne Roos' musical library.

The newly released CD was recorded in Surround Sound at George Lucas' Marin County Skywalker Studio, which makes the Celtic folk music an especially powerful listening experience.

It is the South Lake Tahoe Celtic harp player's fourth CD, and the third to be encased in a hardcover book.

"A Light in the Forest" was recorded in an arduous two days by Roos, fiddle player Dorothy A. Hawkinson, guitarist Alan Fuller, viola player Michael Frost, wind player Char Berta and percussionist Chris Caswell.

"Everybody had a microphone and was spaced out enough so there was not a lot of bleed," said Roos, a full-time Tahoe musician for 15 years.

The CD was recorded from the live ensemble. There was no overdubbing.

"That gave it a live feel and a more honest approach which is more like the music is actually presented in the community and in the world," said Hawkinson, who wrote four of the 18 tracks, including the aforementioned mazurka entitled "Bottom's Dream."

The song came to Hawkinson in a dream and was incorporated into a short story about Bottom, a character from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Roos authored essays about each song in the CD book, which is accompanied by illustrations, many of them historic and not subject to copyright laws. Other drawings were made by Roos' husband, John.

Themes for music and essays are folk history, the forest and the real and mythical creatures inside of it.

Each of Roos' CD's have a theme. "Mermaids & Mariners" is about the sea, and two of those songs are used by United Airlines for in-flight music. The other CDs are "Through the Mist," which has an environmental flavor, and there is also "Haste to the Wedding."

Roos mostly performs as a soloist, much of the time at weddings.

"A Light in the Forest" is a technical masterpiece used by Dolby to display its quality, Roos said.

"A Light in the Forest" is 74 minutes, 50 seconds - just 10 seconds short of the most minutes a CD can record.

"Comments about "Mermaids & Mariners" was that at 55 minutes it was too short," Roos said. "Nobody can say that about this CD."

Roos' Web site is www.celticharpmusic.com.