12-year-old harpist to play at band concert

Harpist Audrey Kost, the 12-year-old daughter of Fred and Lisa Kost of San Mateo, Calif., and granddaughter of Charles and Shirley McCracken of Fairfield, will be performing during the Fairfield Municipal Band concert at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Central Park.

Kost will be playing a 33-string folk harp made by her grandfather during the concert because, according to him, it costs more than $1,000 to ship her 47-string concert harp across the country.

Kost has worked with harp teachers at Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan for the past two summers and now is on her way back to California from her three-week participation in the Interlochen Intermediate Harp program.

In California, Kost is the principal harpist in the Peninsula Chamber string group and will be playing in the Peninsula Youth Artist Orchestra this fall. The Peninsula is the area from San Francisco south to San Jose, which also is known as Silicon Valley.

She is attends The Nueva School and competed this summer as part of a team of sixth graders, who represented the state of California in the International Futures Problem Solving Bowl on the topic of international women?s rights.

In her spare time, Kost likes to ride horses and help foster rescue dogs with the Northern California Boxer Rescue League.

Kost?s mother, Lisa McCracken Kost, graduated from Fairfield High School in 1984.