nicole PAIEMENT
conductor

It was Mozart's boast that he could master any musical style within a week and by the end of that time compose in it adeptly enough to deceive experts...Lou Harrison has something
of that virtuosity himself...and he mixes things with infallible imagination...
--Virgil Thomson

Lou Harrison has for fifty years been in the vanguard of American composers. An innovator of musical composition and performance that transcends cultural boundaries, Harrison's highly acclaimed work juxtaposes and synthesizes musical dialects from virtually every corner of the world.

Born in Portland, Oregon, on May 14, 1917, Lou Harrison grew up in the culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area. There he was influenced by Cantonese Opera, Gregorian chant, and the music of California's Spanish and Mexican cultures. Harrison also developed an interest in Indonesian Gamelan music through early recordings. As a young man, Lou Harrison worked as a dancer and a dance accompanist. His early compositions included a large body of percussion music, combining Western, Asian, African and Latin American rhythmic influences with homemade 'junk' instruments. During this period, Harrison worked closely with John Cage and began studies in Los Angeles with Arnold Schoenberg. A move to New York in the mid-forties brought Lou Harrison to the Herald Tribune as music critic. Here Harrison helped to bring wider attention to the work of Charles Ives, and is considered largely responsible for Ives receiving the Pulitzer Prize. The young composer and critic also embarked on a study of early European music during this period. In the late forties, Harrison taught at the legendary Black Mountain College. By the early fifties, he moved back to California, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Residence on the West Coast intensified Harrison's involvement in a synthesis of musical cultures bordering on the Pacific, reflected in such works as Pacifica Rondo and Lo Koro Sutro for chorus and gamelan. Over the decades he maintained an interest in dance, theater and the craft of instrument building and was an accomplished puppeteer who wrote written musical for puppet theater. Lou Harrison traveled extensively, adding to the global resonance his artistry, performing and studying with the musical masters of varied cultures, and presenting his work to enthusiastic audiences everywhere.

The composer Lou Harrison died suddenly in the evening of February 2, 2003. He was traveling to Columbus Ohio, after having taken the California Zephyr from the West Coast to Chicago, en route to a festival in his honor at Ohio State University. He is held close to many hearts, a hero in life and art.