Avalon services
a history
Geoffrey L. Ricketts is the sole proprietor of Avalon Services so this is also a personal history. The first of many projects to eventually be part of Avalon Services was
Krystal Ball Productions. Geoffrey first established KBP to place one of his songs, "Worship Peace" on a vinyl LP project called "12X12 Volume III," produced by Tom Hyndricks. 12X12 featured 11 other bands besides Geoffrey's band Glass Onyon.
The year was 1985. Looked like 1965 didn't they?
Geoffrey in The King's Feast at The Texas Renaissance Festival
In 1988 Geoffrey began performing at renaissance fairs as Geoffrey the Bard where Hawk the Balladeer introduced him to ParaCelt who would lead to Geoffrey becoming a harpist.
Quitting his day job as a TV producer and broadcast technician at Southwestern Television Network, Geoffrey pursued a formal education in harp, music theory and composition at The University of North Texas, School of Music at Denton.
UNT harp department 1993 with such notable harpists as
Ellen Ritscher, Gay LaBlank, Rachel Starr-Ellens, Barbara Kirchoff, Emily Mitchell, Wan Pin and Todd Ramsey.
The next Avalon Service was
The Geoffrey Harp School, established in 1995 through The Folk Shoppe & Harp Salon at Brook Mays Music Company in Irving Texas where Geoffrey was the Departmental Head.
While at Brook Mays Geoffrey had loads of fun and enjoyed his work very much. Here we see him as Bardo - the lost Marx Brother, like his brother Harpo a harpist of the highest caliber.
The next project to be produced on Krystal Ball Productions was a harp centered adult contemporary band, at first 'The Millennium Project,' later to be called 'Dream Plane.' Dream Plane featured Geoffrey, Keith Goodwin the Assistant Manager at BMMC on guitar, Colin Norton a student's husband on Bass and Andy Fulencheck salesman at BMMC on Violyn.
Going into the studio to record "Out of a Dream"
they took:
drummer John Benson, guitarist Jim Hancock, flutist Bob Bielefeld and guitarist Wally Tarkington.
A foreign investor, who wishes to remain anonymous, discovered Geoffrey in 1998 and convinced him to go into business for himself. With way too little money Geoffrey quit his job at BMMC to open the next Avalon Service, his own harp school & store which he called :
The
Geoffrey Harp School & Harps of Avalon.
Geoffrey observed anxiously as the workmen went to work fashioning a harp showroom, class and concert hall out of an after school tutoring center.
We created one of the premier harp showcases in the world while building a student body for the school.
Harps of Avalon remained open in Bedford, Texas from April 1999 through January 2003. Each month we hosted a concert featuring many harpists and folk musicians from around the area. We called these concerts
The Food Pantry Concert Series because we collected canned goods and gave them to local food banks.
Geoffrey's inspiration
ParaCelt and Hiliard Stone
perform in the first
Food Pantry Concert
April, 15 1999
While in Bedford, Geoffrey, his harp ensemble The Bardic Circle and Dream Plane performed all around Dallas and Ft. Worth.
Dream Plane at The White-Rock and Role Run The Bardic Circle at Shakespeare Festival
Dream Plane at 50's day City of Irving, get a load of that hair!
Channel 8 WFAA Dallas made Harps of Avalon and Dream Plane one of
John Pronk's Texas Tales in November of 1999.
Business built slow and steady for the next year. The student body grew but the groups Dream Plane and the Bardic Circle broke up. Then came September 11, 2001. For a while after the tragedy people kept buying harps and enrolling in classes. They wanted to stay home and learn an art.
Then Geoffrey organized "The Texas Men's Harp Ensemble" from his male students. We had ten male harpists at our first performance.
