‘More and more, I seem to be working with a magnified sense of time, subjugating the experience of time passing in a linear fashion and placing the emphasis on non-goal-related forms: the moment and our perception of it. This has allowed me to look more closely at the ‘fabric’ of the music and to put more emphasis on musical detail. Variation, it seems to me, may operate on an implicit level and deal, for instance, with the nuances of timbral change. Someone once said to me that there was a crucial difference between hearing music and listening to it. For me, I want to try to create a situation where one can really listen.’

Bryn Harrison studied composition with Gavin Bryars at De Montfort University, Leicester. His music has been performed extensively in the UK at most of Britain’s leading festivals and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. He has established a particularly close association with the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival receiving prizes there in 1993 and 1995 and commissions from the festival in 1999 and 2002.

In 1999 he was selected to compete for the International Gaudeamus Prize in the Netherlands and since then he has received many performances throughout Europe, USA and Japan, including those at festivals such as Wien Horgange, Ultraschall, Hannover Biennale, Festival Klangspuren, Europaischer Musikmonat, Wittener Tage and the Paris Festival Automne. In 2001 he attended the Ostrava New Music Days in the Czech Republic where he studied briefly with Christian Wolff and Alvin Lucier and, in the same year, was invited to attend the ISCM World Music Days in Yokohama, Japan.

Performers include Ensemble Recherche, Apartment House, Ixion, [rout], London Sinfonietta, Suono Mobile and Chroma as well as duos and soloists such as Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea, Duo Contour, Irvine Arditti and Mieko Kanno, Susan Knight, Andrew Sparling, Jonathan Powell, Philip Thomas and the internationally-acclaimed accordionist Teodoro Anzellotti.

For the past four years he has been collaborating closely with painter and printmaker Mike Walker which has resulted in a series of new work and two solo exhibitions and is currently one of sic composers undertaking the London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper Award. He lives near the small Pennine town of Hebden Bridge with his girlfriend Jane, his son Dillon and stepson Harry.

photo: Wim Jansen

‘....Bryn Harrison's 'the ground' for ensemble was the most notable debut; a tapestry of swoops and slides that owed a passing debt to Feldman.’

Tom Service; The Guardian, 24.10.2000