Bang on a Can Cantaloupe Music

“Revelation is a…marathon for solo piano employing an otherworldly vocabulary of sounds and effects.” –The New York Times

“[Revelation is] an indisputable landmark in Western tuning’s circuitous history.” —Kyle Gann, The Village Voice

“An American maverick.” —Philip Glass

On October 9, 2007, Cantaloupe Music will release New York composer/pianist Michael Harrison’s new recording: REVELATION: Music In Pure Intonation.

REVELATION: Music In Pure Intonation utilizes innovative tuning relationships to further develop Just Intonation—an ancient tuning system where the distances between notes are based upon whole number ratios. The result is a 75-minute work where groups of notes played together rapidly with both hands form “…pulsating, shimmering walls of sound in which all kinds of ghost-like sound effects and structures appear” (The Wire). Mark Swed of the LA Times says of REVELATION: “Perhaps the most surprising quality of REVELATION is its straightforward sensuality…along with heaping doses of old-fashioned, jaw-dropping virtuosity that simply pull the listener along.”

Michael Harrison was a protégé of La Monte Young and has developed one of the most distinctive musical styles of our time. By adapting universal principles of harmonic resonance to create new tunings and scales, he combines Western classical and North Indian music to forge “a new harmonic world…of vibrant sound” (The New York Times).

Harrison also co-owns Faust Harrison Pianos in New York City, one of the largest high-end piano retail and rebuilding firms in the country. He is President of the American Academy of Indian Classical Music, a recipient of numerous prestigious grants and awards, and an international instructor, performer, and lecturer. Michael Harrison is currently composing a new work for cellist Wendy Sutter entitled Cellorchestra, for live, looping cello and tamburas, and a version of REVELATION, entitled Tone Clouds, for amplified string quartet and media for the San Francisco based Del Sol Quartet.