John Harbison
One of the dominant compositional voices of his generation, John Harbison’s concert music catalog of more than 300 works is anchored by three operas, six symphonies, twelve concerti, a ballet and an organ symphony, six string quartets, numerous song cycles and chamber works, and a large body of sacred music that includes cantatas, motets, and the orchestral-choral works Four Psalms, Requiem, and Abraham. He also has a substantial body of jazz compositions and arrangements, and is author of the book What Do We Make of Bach?
Harbison has received commissions from most of America’s premiere musical institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. His music is distinguished by its exceptional resourcefulness and expressive range, in music from the grandest to the most intimate. His style is “orginal, varied, and absorbing—relatively easy for audiences to grasp, and yet formal and complex enough to hold our interests through repeated hearings…boasting both lucidity and logic.” (Fanfare)
Fall 2024 saw premieres of Prelude-Variations (Pierrot ensemble), Two Noble Kinsmen (chorus & strings), and Missa Brevis, for keyboard. 2025 will see first performances of new song cycles—The Next Subject (Michael Fried) and a Wallace Stevens collection—the Quintet for Viola and Strings, and Solos for Strings for the Klein Competition. A second volume of Harbison’spop and jazz songs, and a collection of his a capella arrangements of jazz standards and originals, will both be published this year, as will his cadenzas for various Mozart and Beethoven concertos. Harbison’s opera The Great Gatsby is due for major revival in 2025, an important anniversary year for both Fitzgeralds’ book and the opera’s premiere.
Harbison’s numerous awards and honors include a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize. He has been composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh and Los Angeles orchestras, the American Academy in Rome, and numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen, Marlboro, Santa Fe, and Songfest. He is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, principal guest conductor at Emmanuel Music, and past music director of Cantata Singers. He was President of the Copland Fund and a trustee of the American Academy in Rome. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a trustee of the Bogliasco Foundation, and chair emeritus of the composition program at Tanglewood. He and violinist Rose Mary Harbison, the inspiration behind many of his works for violin, have been artistic co-directors of the annual Token Creek Chamber Music Festival since its founding in 1989.
Violinist Rose Mary Harbison is co-artistic director of the Token Creek Festival. She has appeared as soloist with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Oakland, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh symphonies, and been guest artist with the Santa Fe, Aspen, Tanglewood, and Berlin Festivals. Recital partners include Leonard Stein, Judith Gordon, Ursula Oppens, Robert Levin, and Eli Kalman. She has worked with many composers, among them Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions. Harbison founded, with violinist Rudolph Kolisch, the Kolisch Ensemble, and she continues to advocate for his performance practice. For many decades she collaborated with the late W. Jack Fry, professor of physics at UW-Madison, in his groundbreaking research into the acoustical properties of the world’s finest violins. Harbison is a founding member of Emmanuel Music, Boston, where she regularly performed in Bach cantatas and chamber music programs. She taught at Brandeis University and MIT, and was named a Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute.
