Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell

condition (record/cover): NM / EX

Two of the great figures of the American West Coast experimental tradition, documented together on Composers Recordings Inc. Lou Harrison's Suite and Henry Cowell's Persian Set both reflect an engagement with non-Western music that was at the time far from commonplace in American concert music. Harrison had studied with Cowell and inherited his mentor's democratic curiosity about musical cultures across the globe; his own engagement with Indonesian gamelan, Korean court music, and invented intonation systems would deepen throughout his career into a compositional practice unlike anyone else's. Cowell's Persian Set draws on Iranian musical materials with a directness and openness that, in 1957, was genuinely unusual. A document of a lineage that runs from Cowell through Harrison and on into some of the most interesting American music of the later 20th century.