Jonty Harrison

Articles Indéfinis traces almost twenty years in the studio of Jonty Harrison, from Pair / Impair, realized in 1978 at the University of East Anglia, to two pieces from 1995. In his note the composer describes how a 45-minute introduction to the studio in 1974 changed his idea of composition: working with sound itself, tested by the ear, rather than with abstract relations written on paper. The booklet opens with an essay by Denis Smalley on the volatility and playfulness of Harrison’s music.

… et ainsi de suite… is his “French Suite” in the musique concrète tradition. It grew from the sounds of rough-textured wine glasses transformed at the GRM in Paris and then in Birmingham, assembled into eleven movements with French titles such as à propos, commentaire and (parenthèse); it won a Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica 1993 and first prize at Musica Nova in Prague in 1994. Aria, made at the GMEB in Bourges, elaborates the gesture of a gust of air, with many sounds produced on the studio’s EMS Vocoder. Unsound Objects, an ICMA commission, plays on the ambiguity between recognisable sources and abstract structure that Schaeffer’s reduced listening tried to exclude.

Hot Air, commissioned by the Ina-GRM and premiered at Radio France in 1995, starts from balloons at children’s parties and moves on to breath, heat and air as the medium of sound, until the inflated balloon becomes an image of a fragile planet.

Born in Scunthorpe in 1952, Harrison studied at the University of York with Bernard Rands, Elisabeth Lutyens and David Blake, and worked on electroacoustic parts for productions at the National Theatre in London. From 1980 he taught at the University of Birmingham, where he directed the studios and BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre).

CD in Opak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9627, 1996.