Michael Harrison
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- For other persons named Michael Harrison, see Michael Harrison (disambiguation).
Michael Harrison, following a lifelong study of both Western classical and North Indian classical music, has forged “a new harmonic world” (New York Times).
In 1986, he designed and created the “harmonic piano,” an extensively modified seven-foot grand piano with the ability to alternate between two different tunings to play 24 notes per octave on a conventional keyboard. Kyle Gann, in The Village Voice, hailed the harmonic piano as “a landmark in the history of Western tuning.” Once a protégé of composer La Monte Young, Harrison prepared all of the specialized tunings for Young’s 6 1/2 hour seminal work The Well-Tuned Piano, and became the only other person to ever perform the work. For the past 25 years, Harrison has performed his own music throughout the United States and Europe.