Bryn Harrison

Bryn Harrison (born 1969 in Bolton, England) is a British experimental composer. His works have been widely performed by international ensembles and he was a recipient of the 2013 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers. He is currently Reader in Composition at the University of Huddersfield.

His music deals with ideas of repetition and memory by using “recursive musical structures” and sometimes extended durations, such as the 45-minute ensemble work Repetitions in Extended Time (2008) and the 76-minute piano piece Vessels (2013).

Education

Harrison initially studied at the Leeds College of Music (1988-91), before completing a master’s degree under composer Gavin Bryars at De Montfort University, Leicester. In 1999 he was selected to compete for the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in the Netherlands. He also studied briefly with Christian Wolff and Alvin Lucier in 2001 at the Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic. He was awarded a PhD by the University of Huddersfield in 2007.

Career

Harrison established an early relationship with the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, where his music was presented in 1993 and 1995, before he received festival commissions in 1999 and was the festival’s featured composer in 2008. Ensembles and soloists who have performed his music include Ensemble recherche, Klangforum Wien, the London Sinfonietta, the London Symphony Orchestra, Apartment House, Plus-Minus, Asamisimasa, ELISION, EXAUDI, the pianists Philip Thomas and Mark Knoop, and the violinist Aisha Orazbayeva.

Style

Harrison's work is influenced by the music of Morton Feldman. Feldman and Harrison’s works share a general quietness and contemplativeness, a static texture and a concern with repetition or, in Harrison’s words, "use of recursive musical forms which challenge our perceptions of time and space by viewing the same material from different angles and perspectives." Other composers for whom Harrison has expressed an admiration include John Cage, Laurence Crane, Tim Parkinson, James Saunders, Richard Glover, Howard Skempton, Christopher Fox, Linda Catlin Smith, Martin Arnold, and Cassandra Miller.

Harrison has also been influenced by visual artists such as Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, James Hugonin and the painter and printmaker Mike Walker, with whom he has collaborated. The artwork of Bridget Riley has been an especially important source for Harrison's work, in works such as Six Symmetries (2004), in which Harrison traced musical notation from geometric contours similar to those in Riley's 1960s paintings.

List of works

• Passing Light (2014) for ensemble and electronics
• Receiving the Approaching Memory (2014) for violin and piano
• Seven Circular Forms (2013) for ensemble
• Vessels (2012) for piano
• Eight Voices (2011) for SSAATTBB voices
• Five Distances (2011) for voice and piano
• MCE (2010) for guitar solo
• Surface forms (repeating) (2009) for ensemble and mezzo soprano
• Quietly Rising (piano piece 2008) (2008) piano with optional electronics (moogbar)
• an oblique (2008) for mezzo soprano and piano
• Repetitions in Extended Time (2008) for ensemble
• Five Miniatures in Three Parts (2008) for flexible instrumentation
• Plane Image (2007) four parts (open scoring)
• a leaf falls on loneliness (2007) for clarinet, mezzo soprano, piano, violin, cello
• Linden quartet (2006) for clarinet, piano, electric guitar and percussion
• Shifting Light (2006) for orchestra
• Return (2005) for electric guitar
• Piano Set (six miniatures) (2005) for piano
• Six Symmetries (2004) for large ensemble (17 instruments)
• Octet (2004) for ensemble
• Second In Nomine after William Byrd (2004) for ensemble
• After Sylvestro Ganassi (2004) for tenor recorder and voice
• Four Cycles (2002-2005) for 13 instruments
• Rise (2003) for clarinet, piano, violin and cello
• Low Time Patterns (2002) for ensemble
• Open 3 (2002) for piano
• Four Parts to Centre (2002) for clarinet, electric guitar, viola and cello
• Etre-temps (2002) for piano
• Inner-voice (2001) for accordion
• Listenings I (2001) for violin and piano
• Open 1 (2001) for viola
• Open 2 (2001) for clarinet
• Listenings II (2000) for flute and violin
• The Ground (2000) for ensemble
• Listenings III (1999) for trumpet and percussion
• In Nomine after William Byrd (1999) for ensemble
• ...of shadow and light (1998) for ensemble
• Fractured Spaces (1998) for guitar
• Mantra (1997) for trumpet and drone
• Hijos Del Aire (1997) for strings
• Guitar Trio (1997)
• Cassiopeia (1996) for violin
• Forms of Distance (1996) for guitar
• Frozen Earth (1995) for two violins