Jeffrey Harrington

Compositional Resume  

2005 

•  Sonata for Violin and Piano (16 mins.)

2004

•  Prelude #4 for 19ET Piano (1 min. 30 secs.)
•  Prelude #3 for 19ET Piano (4 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Prelude #2 for 19ET Piano (3 mins.)
•  Prelude #1 for 19ET Piano (4 mins.)
•  Pyrogen for Piano Trio (14 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Cassotis for Mandolin and Guitar (15 mins.)

Commissioned by Duo Ahlert und Schwab. Premiere scheduled for 2006 by Duo Ahlert  und Schwab

2003

•  DeltaBandResonator for Piano (14 mins. 30 secs.)

Realized/Performed by Steve Layton on his album Different Light, Same Window

Radio Premiere October 10, 2004, Trent Radio Trent Radio 92.7 FM, Ontario Canada

•  Croche et Tient for MalletKAT and Quartertone Synthesizer (11 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiered and commissioned by Michael Manion, June 7 2004, Feedback Studio,  Cologne

•  Transcension - Album of electronic music self-released
•  Obliterature -  Album of electronic music improvisations from 1991-92 self-released
•  Arddha Jangala - Electronic Composition (2 mins. 38 secs.)

Released on the album Transcension

2002

•  Espace - Album of electronic music self-released
•  L'Ecume des Temps for Guitar and Violin (10 mins. 30 secs.)
•  AgnusDeiWave - Electronic Composition (9 mins. 10 secs.)

Released on the album Espace

•  Echoi - Electronic Composition (2 mins. 21 secs.)

Released on the album Espace

•  Arctogæal - Electronic Composition (3 mins. 10 secs.)

Released on the album Espace

•  Métamorphose de Narcisse - Electronic Composition (6 mins. 12 secs.)

2001   

•  The Hammered Wind Dances II for Flute and Piano (16 mins.)
•  The Hammered Wind Dances I for Flute and Piano (15 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Irae for Violin, Viola and Contrabass (12 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiered and commissioned by March 15, 2003, Topology, Brisbane Powerhouse,  Brisbane, Australia

•  Erg for Mandolin and Guitar (10 mins.)

Premiered June 7, 2002,  by Daniel Ahlert and Birgit Schwab in "Gitarre virtuos",  Remscheid, Germany

Reviews from the Premiere:

- "It was a composition by Jeffrey Harrington: "Erg", inspired by a nature experience in Morocco. It gave an sonic view of the coming and going of a shifting sand dune in the desert, using musical means."

- "With 'Erg' by the American composer Jeffrey Harrington there was also a world premiere. Only written some months ago it musically narrates the story of a town being swallowed by a shifting sand dune. The Arabic associations, underlined the transformational capacity and technical competence of the duo."  -- Ulrich Mutz

Recorded on the album Nowhere Left to Go (Antes Edition BM 31.9195) by Duo Ahlert  und Schwab

Performances:

 May 7, 2005, Somnambulist Music Series, Chicago

 May 5, 2005, Nichols Concert Hall, Evanston, IL

 May 1, 2005, North Shore Presbyterian Church, Milwaukee, WI

 April 29, 2005, Lecture Recital Hall, ICC , Peoria, IL

 Feb. 2, 2005 Schultenhof, Mettingen, Germany

 Jan. 23, 2005, Gemeindezentrum der Lutherkirche, Datteln, Germany

 Nov. 9, 2003, Stadthaus der Katholischen Kirche, Gladbeck, Germany

 Nov. 4, 2002, MHS, Wuppertal, Germany

 Sept. 1, 2002, Gut Schede, Wetter, Germany

 Aug. 11, 2002, Gut Hange, Freren, Germany

2000 

•  Jardin des Merveilles for Irrationally Tuned Synthesizer (9 mins. 31 secs.)
•  Eroica Spettrale - Electronic Composition (7 mins. 38 secs.)

Released on the album Espace

Radio Premiere, A New Stage V - Ambient Counterpoint - Radio4, Holland, October 2, 2000

•  Lamentation Sidérales - Electronic Composition (17 mins. 43 secs.)

Released on the album Espace

Radio Premiere, A New Stage V - Ambient Counterpoint - Radio4, Holland, October 2, 2000

•  Spirale d'Arco for String Quartet (#4) (8 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Anamorphosis for String Quartet (#3) (11 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Tetra-Mnemosyne VII for String Trio (15 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Tetra-Mnemosyne VI for String Trio (14 mins.)

Radio Premiere June 17, of synthesized realization WHUS/Storrs, Connecticut

•  Interviewed/Featured January 15 and January 22, on Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar, WGDR FM 91.1, Plainfield Vermont

1999 

•  Espace des Cloches - Electronic Composition (3 mins. 30 secs.)

Released on the album Espace

Premiered August 25-26, 2001, OughtOne Festival, Montpelier, Vermont,

Radio Premiere, A New Stage V - Ambient Counterpoint - Radio4, Holland, October 2, 2000

•  Tetra-Mnemosyne V for String Trio (14 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Village Voice Review:

- Jeffrey Harrington's Acid Bach plinks its way through microtonal melodies like banjo music somehow smeared by a wet hand. The way those melodies fit together is determined by computer, for Harrington has programmed his software to work out the contrapuntal problems itself. He's a rare find; from his beginnings in Mississippi he's lived in a number of musical worlds, and at 17 wrote a serial piece based on the bass line from a Billy Cobham song. In the '80s he forged a style by combining an 18th-century harmonic vocabulary with jazz rhythms, while working as a galley hand in the offshore oil fields of Louisiana, as clerk in the world's oldest record store (Liberty Music on Madison Avenue), and writing Java games for Children's Television Workshop.

 

By a slim margin, Harrington is the most intriguing new figure I've discovered (so far) on the Web page that every new-music Web search ultimately brings me to: Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar (www.goddard.edu/wgdr/kalvos).  -- Kyle Gann, Village Voice, July 7 - 13, 1999

•  MumboGumbo for Flute, Alto Sax, Violin, Cello and Piano (11 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiered February 12 2000 in St. Louis, MO by Synchronia

•  Tetra-Mnemosyne IV for String Trio (11 mins. )
•  Tetra-Mnemosyne III for String Trio (14 mins. 30 secs.)

1998 

•  Piano Prelude 22 (1 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Piano Prelude 21 (2 mins.)   
• Piano Prelude 20 (2 mins.)    
• Piano Prelude 19 (3 mins.)    
• Piano Prelude 18 (3 mins. 30 secs.)   
• Piano Prelude 17 (6 mins.)    
• Tetra-Mnemosyne II for String Trio (15 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Interviewed/Featured January 31 and February 7, on Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar, WGDR FM 91.1, Plainfield Vermont

1997 

•  Tetra-Mnemosyne I for String Trio (10 mins. 30 secs.)
•  New Zion Pastorale for Orchestra (9 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiered and commissioned by by Andrew Levin and the Clemson University Symphony Orchestra April 21, 1998

•  Capriccio Barbaro for Flute and Piano (8 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Piano Prelude 16 (5 mins. 30 secs.)    
•  Piano Prelude 15 (3 mins.)    
• Piano Prelude 14 (2 mins.)    
• Piano Prelude 13 (5 mins. 30 secs.)

 

1996 

•  Pesante ma secco for Violin and Piano (3 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Morph-Fantasia for Woodwind Quintet (13 mins.) 
•  Oneiromancer  for Flute, Harp and Viola (8 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiered by Nigel Keay, Eric Kohenoff and Alix Couillaud April 10, 2005, in Paris

•  Gygr for Flute, Harp and Viola (14 mins.)

Premiered by the Gaudae Trio February 24, 2001, in Amsterdam

•  Piano Prelude 12 (1 min.)   
• Piano Prelude 11 (2 mins. 30 secs.)   
• Piano Prelude 10 (2 mins.)    
• Piano Prelude 9 (2 mins. 30 secs.)

1995 

•  KaleidoPsychoTropos for 5 Instruments (12 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiered November 19, 1995 in St. Louis, MO by Synchronia

- "(Harrington) utilized the entire ensemble in an alternately dark and rhythmic collage of styles, textures and bits and pieces from all over the world." -  R.L. Ragsdale, Riverfront Times, St. Louis, Mo. (after the November 19, 1995 premiere by Synchronia, Timothy Vincent Clark, Music Director).

Performances:

May 17, 1996 - St. Louis, MO by Synchronia

- "Composer Jeffrey Harrington's 'KaleidoPsychoTropos' set the tone for the evening. The composition, chosen from among 1,060 submitted as a result of a Synchronia call for new scores, was described by the program as a 'boiling pot of gumbo' containing rap-song bass lines, Hungarian and Arabic melodies, ragtime and a little rock 'n roll. Certainly, it is kaleidoscopic, with lots going on all the time, but its development is less like a smooth stew and more like abrupt chunks of sound expertly plastered into place with a little counterpoint." - John Huxhold, Riverfront Times, St. Louis, Mo. (after the May 17, 1996 Synchronia performance).

•  Symphony #2 for String Orchestra (10 mins. 30 secs.)    
•  Symphony #1 for Large Orchestra (17 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Piano Prelude 8 (3 mins.)

Premiere by Tyson Deaton, July 26, 1997, Marion, IL

•  Piano Prelude 7 (2 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiere Performance by Katie Hug, October 28 1996, Pro Football Hall of Fame

Auditorium, Canton Ohio

Performances:

 July 26, 1997 by Tyson Deaton, , Marion, IL        

1994

•  MockingSongBird Soliloquy for Solo Oboe (3 mins.)     
•  Duo Dioscuri for Bass and Piano (11 mins.)    
• Baudelaire Macabre for Marimba and Soprano on texts by Baudelaire (6 mins.)  
• Mercurealities for Flute, Viola and Cello (15 mins.)

Premiered July 1996 by the Carolina Chamber Players, Clemson, SC

Performances:

 August 16, 1997 - Carolina Chamber Players, National Flute Association   Convention, Chicago, IL

 Chicago Hilton, International Ball Room - Newly Published Music Award Winner   1997

 October 5, 1997 - Onyx Ensemble, Mexico City   

•  Chawswizzler for 9 Instruments (10 mins. 30 secs.)    
•  Gnomos for Bassoon and Piano (12 mins. 30 secs.)    
•  BlueStrider for Piano (12 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiered by Andrew F. Anderson, Ann Arbor, November 21, 1997

Performances:

 April 10, 2002, by Ian Roger Colley, "South East Piano Competition" in South   Australia

Realized/Performed by Steve Layton on his album The Composer Plays III: Works for  Imaginary Piano

1993

•  Tchoupitoulas Byrd Song for Clarinet and Piano (10 mins.)

Premiere and commissioned by Mark Simon, February 22, 1994, Ithaca NY

 

1992 

•  String Quartet #2 (14 mins.) 
•  Piano Prelude 6 (2 mins. 30 secs.)

Premiere Performance by Svetlana Kalinnikova in Noginsk, Russia November 9, 1993

Performances:

 Prelude 6 by Tyson Deaton, July 26, 1997, Marion, IL \

•  String Quartet #1 (15 mins. 30 secs.) 
•  Piano Trio (11 mins. 30 secs.)
•  Piano Preludes 1-5

Premiere by Tyson Deaton, July 26, 1997, Marion, IL  

•  Obliterature - set 12 of electronic  improvisations from 1991-1992 released on private tape/label

1991      

•  Acid Bach Suite for Quartertone Tuned Synthesizer (6 mins. 41 secs.) 

Released on the album, Musenet, an Internet -organized compilation 1992  

Radio Premiere May 17 1999, Radio Premiere Acid Bach II - A NEW STAGE I Radio 4,  Holland

Biography

Jeffrey Harrington was born in 1955 in Forest, Mississippi. His mother and father were amateur musicians who played the popular music of the 40's and 50's for fun. In high school he taught himself blues and boogie-woogie piano and built a synthesizer from parts. He began composing when he was 17 and won a composition contest for a serial composition using an isorhythm derived from a Billy Cobham song bass line. During that same time, he and his friend Barney Kilpatrick began working at the New Orleans Jazz Festival where he was a stage hand. During these times he received impromptu guidance and some informal lessons from piano greats Professor Longhair and Roosevelt Sykes. He also set up stage and met many other blues greats, (Bukka White, Snooks Eaglin, B.B. King, et al) and this experience formed a powerful musical and personal confirmation that the blues and New Orleans funk music were to remain a driving influence throughout his life.

Harrington continued his undergraduate composition studies at LSU and later at the Juilliard School where he studied in the Master's program with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions. He has also studied with Morton Subotnick, Jacob Druckman (master class), Joan LaBarbara, James Drew, Barbara Jazwinski and Deborah Drattell.

In 1981 he began a series of compositions using the harmonic idiom of the 18th century with rhythms from jazz and African-American music. In 1987 he returned to a more chromatic style of composition while retaining his interest in melody and counterpoint and the dramatic/developmental processes of the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. In 1990 he retracted all but a few of his compositions written to date (approximately 100, including 5 symphonies and numerous piano and chamber compositions).

In 1991 he programmed an expert system in C (inspired by a book by Taniiev - Convertible Counterpoint) which assists him in his discovery of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in his melodies. The system takes up to 6 tracks of music and determines (using a pre-selected harmonic rulebase) the points at which the melodies mesh to produce effective counterpoint. The system produces music files ready to audition in realtime, so he can simultaneously be developing a transition while he produces the next section of counterpoint.

Since 1987, Harrington has utilized various electronic networks to promote, publish and perform his music.  He has received over 10 million downloads and is currently receiving approximately 40,000 downloads a month of his music through his personal site http://jeffharrington.org.  Although Harrington's work is little known outside the Internet, within the Internet audience, because of his early adoption of Internet distribution techniques, he is likely one of the most listened to living contemporary composers in the world.