Michael Harrison

I am a contemporary classical composer and pianist specializing in working with just intonation tunings. I am very interested in the creative process in all of the arts, and my professional engagements have included collaborations with filmmakers, visual artists, architects, and choreographers. I started working with just intonation in 1979 while studying and singing North Indian classical music with Pandit Pran Nath and composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley. Before long, I started noticing that pianos always sounded out of tune and realized that I was hearing the compromises of equal temperament. I came to New York City to study as La Monte Young’s tuning and performance assistant. Later I created the “harmonic piano,” an extensively modified grand piano able to play 24 notes per octave. To this day I continue a rigorous study and practice of both Indian music and just intonation piano which informs my entire approach to music.

Michael Harrison_Performance Shot_Photo_2010

Composer/pianist Michael Harrison’s works blend classical music traditions of Europe and North India. He seeks expressions of universality via the physics of sound – music that brings one into a state of concentrated listening as a meditative and even mind-altering experience. Harrison is a Guggenheim Fellowship and NYFA Artist Fellowship recipient. His latest release Seven Sacred Names reached the top 10 classical albums on Billboard and was called “music of positively intoxicating beauty” in The New Yorker. Just Constellations, commissioned and recorded by Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, was called "glacially beautiful" and "luminous" in The New Yorker and selected for NPR's Best 100 Songs of 2020. His work, Revelation, achieved international recognition and inclusion in the Best Classical Recordings of 2007 selections of The New York Times and Boston Globe. Harrison has been commissioned by performers including Alarm Will Sound, Cello Octet Amsterdam, and Maya Beiser. His recent engagements include the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Minimal Music Festival in Amsterdam, and Mattatoio Museum in Rome. His music has been performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Park Avenue Armory, BAM Next Wave Festival, United Nations, the Louvre, Pompidou Centre, MASS MoCA, Spoleto, Big Ears, and Sundance.