David Harris
David Harris is a Melbourne-based composer and former lecturer in composition at the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide. Since 1980 his prolific output has ranged from hardcore minimalism to post-romantic expression and experimental hybrids.
Before joining the university staff in 2002 he spent a decade at the Flinders Street School of Music developing composition studies to degree level. An interest in materials that seem unable to share the same space led to the Compossible series, begun in 1994: works that set chromatic, rhythmically disjointed episodes beside warm, tonally centred writing under the idea of things ‘able to co-exist with’ one another. The series runs to some fifteen pieces for mixed ensemble.
His music has been heard in France, the USA, Canada, Poland and Australia, including major new-music festivals. Compossible XIV (TP207) appears on a duo-violin programme of new Australian works. Solo piano pieces including The Broken Dance and The Unfinished Chorale feature on Aporia (MD 3418).
Press quotes
David Harris’s Compossible XIV offers contrasts of timbre, dynamics and playing styles, incorporating microtones and a broad range of extended techniques. Broken into textural sections, downward sliding glissandi become a dominant textural element. The last quarter of the piece features meshed glissandi (up to four parts) between the two instruments moving incredibly slowly. The effect is particularly striking.
David Harris’s Compossible XIV investigates many of the violin’s capabilities.
Compositions by David Harris appear on
Aporia
Michael Kieran Harvey performs his third piano sonata in the company of four contemporary Australian works that show the range of Australia’s twenty-first-century musical languages.