Released on 10/10/26, Aphelion is the seventh full-length studio album and a multimedia memoir in poetry, music, story, and imagery by award-winning harpist, composer, author and seminary professor April Stace. Drawing on her work as both a professional musician and an Episcopal priest, April invites audiences into stories that are at once deeply personal and widely recognizable: the ending of one chapter, the uncertainty of what comes next, and the surprising discoveries that await when we learn to inhabit our lives differently.
Throughout the performance, audiences are invited to reflect on questions such as:
How do we navigate seasons of profound change?
What can solitude teach us about ourselves?
How does creativity help us make meaning from loss?
Where do we encounter the sacred in everyday life?
Written over a two-year period, Aphelion traces the movement from disorientation toward wonder. Each musical piece is accompanied by an original poem, personal narrative, and visual imagery, creating an immersive experience that unfolds somewhere between a concert, a memoir, and a contemplative retreat.
At its heart, Aphelion invites audiences to consider what becomes possible when familiar roles fall away—and how periods of distance, loss, and uncertainty can open unexpected paths toward freedom, meaning, and creative life.
The album moves between intimate harp passages and layered arrangements drawing on contemporary classical, ambient, jazz and world-music influences. The result is a genre-blurring collection in which the harp becomes both an ancient voice and part of a contemporary musical landscape. - New Music Alert, September 24, 2026
“What makes the album especially fascinating is how far Stace pushes the harp beyond its familiar associations with delicacy and tranquility. Drawing from contemporary classical, ambient, jazz and world-music sensibilities, she creates an intricate sonic vocabulary in which the instrument can shimmer in the upper register one moment, rumble with resonant low tones the next, or become almost percussive through rapid-fire patterns. Throughout, darkness and light continually coexist, often within the same composition, while rhythmic shifts give th music a sense of continual motion even during its most introspective passages.” - Jonathan Widran, The JW Vibe
Click here for full tour schedule
October 2026: Liverpool NY, Trumansburg NY, Madison WI, Chicago IL, Marquette MI
January 2027: Easton MD, College Park MD, Richmond VA, Atlanta GA, Charleston SC
February 2027: Seattle WA, Portland OR, Albuquerque NM
March 2027: Dallas TX
Music video for Ojito, one of the songs on Aphelion.
Want to bring Aphelion to your community? Send April a message here:
