Michael Harrison (musician)

Michael Harrison is an American contemporary classical music composer and pianist, who specializes in working with just intonation tunings, and North Indian classical music (Hindustani classical music).

Harrison studied composition and piano at the University of Oregon and the Juilliard School in the late 1970s and 1980s, and began investigating alternative tunings while studying with La Monte Young, and Indian classical music with Pandit Pran Nath and Terry Riley in this same period (Wise 2005). As Young’s composition assistant, Harrison prepared the specialized tunings and scores for his 6½-hour work, The Well-Tuned Piano, later becoming the only person besides the composer to perform this work. 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. For the past 30 years, Harrison has collaborated with choreographers, visual and media artists, with performances of his music throughout the United States and Europe. He is the co-founder and president of the American Academy of Indian Classical Music and a disciple of master Indian vocalist Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan, with whom he performs regularly.

His major works include Just Ancient Loops for multi-track cellist Maya Beiser with a film by Bill Morrison, “Revelation: Music in Pure Intonation” for piano in an original just intonation tuning, and From Ancient Worlds, for the harmonic piano.

Discography

Compositions

See also

References

Further reading

External links