Melissa Achten is a Los Angeles based harpist focused on immersive musical ritual through experimentation and improvisation.

Her performances directly engage with the listener, blurring the relationship between bodies, instruments, and sound to destabilize and thereby reveal hidden meaning. Within carefully conjured atmospheres, she explores the nuances of surrealism, fantasy, mythology, and the occult and what these say about human experience. In her hands, the harp is untangled from convention and remade as a divining tool for channeling work that is diaristic, intimate, and cathartic.

Drawn to interdisciplinary form, Melissa frequently collaborates with performers, composers, and other artists to realize their work and her own. Melissa is the co-founder and Executive Director of Oracle Egg, an artist-run incubator for experimental music and performance in Los Angeles. She is also a founding member of the absurdist performance ensemble Playstructure Dreamcast and the other half of experimental harp and cello duo RÁN. As a soloist and ensemble member, Melissa has performed and premiered work in Seattle, New York, Germany, and Denmark. Melissa is an alumna of McGill University in Montreal, QC (MMus) and Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA (BMus).