You may have heard of wedding singers and wedding bands but here’s a wedding violinist from Huddersfield who has just won a major award.
Emily Harding from Salendine Nook is a wedding and events violinist known as the Yorkshire Violinist who led Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra from 2013 to 2019.
The 39-year-old mum-of-three performs with a wide range of local music ensembles from orchestras to string quartets along with events bands on her electric violin.
She has just won the Music & DJ category in the Wedding Awards 2024 organised by wedding planning website Hitched UK with the awards based on reviews left by married couples over the past year. Emily has never had less than a five out five score rate.
Emily was also a finalist in last year’s North of England Wedding Awards 2023 in the Live Music category, run by Wedding Fayres Yorkshire, and a local round winner of the International Wedding Awards 2024 for Live Music.
She has quickly become popular on the wedding entertainment scene, often doing four or five weddings a month plus other events ranging from funerals to birthdays.
Emily revealed that the favourite songs she’s asked to play at weddings are A Thousand Years by Christina Perri, Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling In Love along with Ed Sheeran and George Ezra numbers.
One of the oddest was a request for Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar On Me but rock bands Status Quo and Led Zeppelin are other favourites.
“I arrange them to fit the mood,” said Emily. “That can change throughout the day if I’m there from the ceremony right through to the wedding breakfast.
“My wedding services focus on providing high-end live string music for couples to create the perfect soundtrack to their perfect day, offering solo violin which can be acoustic or electric or I can organise duos, string trios or quartets.
“Weddings are rollercoasters of emotions from butterflies to tears of joy and a wedding violinist is like an emotional ninja, weaving music that syncs perfectly with every moment of such a special day.”
Emily has played with Sir Cliff Richard, Andrea Corr and members of The Shadows for the BBC2 Cliff at Christmas TV special at Christmas 2022.
She performs regularly with touring group Symphonic Ibiza which uses a DJ and orchestra to blast out Ibiza dance classics.
“It’s all very eccentric and high energy,” says Emily.
She was born and brought up in Chesterfield and moved to Huddersfield to study a music degree at the University of Huddersfield. It was a last minute change of heart as she had originally planned to do microbiological sciences, but certainly has no regrets.
From there she went to do a joint teaching course at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal Northern College of Music so she could teach both string music and also be a secondary school teacher.
She taught in a secondary school for a decade but in May 2022 set up as the Yorkshire Violinist and now also runs her own music teaching studio in Brighouse, Harding Music, developing musicians in violin, viola, piano, keyboard and music theory.
Emily is married to Paul Harding, also a musician who can play guitar, keyboards and bass and the couple have three children, 11-year-old Charlie, nine-year-old Sam and two-year-old Erin.
To see Emily playing go to her showreels at https://bit.ly/3V114qC
Email her at info@yorkshireviolinist.com or phone 07412 655689.
Her website is https://linktr.ee/yorkshireviolinist
Written by ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging, website content and copywriting.
