Excellent review for Jonty Harrison's HCMF performance: "One of British electronic music’s most significant figures"

The HCMF performance of Jonty Harrison's Going / Places has been reviewed by music website 5:4.

The 60-minute acousmatic project had its world premiere at the new music festival on Wednesday 25 November 2015. 

Describing Harrison as "one of British electronic music's most significant figures," Simon Cummings, founder of 5:4, writes:

"The masterstrokes were everywhere: the counterpoint of Ohio railroad horns building into a complex polyphony; the flattening out of resonance—via a washroom sink on a train—moving seamlessly into prayer vocalisations from Marrakech ...

"The list of memorable moments could go on and on, Equally outstanding was the quality and overwhelming vividness of Harrison’s materials, employed such that the audience kept changing size: one minute we’re walking along a street, the next reduced to the size of barnacle, then plunged into the blubulations of a geothermal pool."

"Going / Places is unequivocally an astounding achievement."

Click here to read the full review. 

The work is made up of recordings made by Harrison whilst travelling around various locations across the world, creating a piece “based broadly on the theme of travel (and the accompanying confusion, disorientation and even alienation)”.

Harrison was born in 1952 and studied with Bernard Rands at the University of York, graduating with a DPhil in Composition in 1980.

As a composer he has received First Prize and Second Prize in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Awards (including a Euphonie d'Or for Klang, cited as one of the 'significant works' of the Bourges competition's history,) a Distinction in the Prix Arts Electronica in Linz, Austria, First Prize in the Musica Nova competition, Prague, the Lloyds Bank National Composer's Award and the PRS Prize for Electroacoustic Composition.

Click here to read Harrison's full biography.