Lou Harrison was born in Portland, Oregon in 1917. His musical style was shaped by the San Francisco of the 1930s. There he studied composition with Henry Cowell, and staged high profile percussion concerts with John Cage. He spent the year 1942-43 in Los Angeles where he studied with Arnold Schoenberg. In 1946, Harrison conducted the premiere of Ives's Third Symphony which he had edited from the manuscript score. The following year Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this work which he shared with Harrison.

During trips to Japan, Korea and Taiwan in 1961-62, he studied native instruments including the cheng and the p'iri. Back in California he enthusiastically presented concerts and lectures on Korean and Chinese music and experimented in his own works with hybrid instrumental ensembles. In 1975, Harrison began an intensive study of traditional Javanese gamelan techniques. He soon began to explore ideas of cross fertilization, adapting the concerto principle to the Indonesian orchestra by composing works for Western soloists accompanied by gamelan. Harrison died in Lafayette, Indiana, 2003, from a heart attack while on his way to a festival of his music at Ohio State University.

This 4 CD set brings together all the works recorded in the USA for the MusicMasters label during the early 1990s.

REVIEW:

Fans will be ecstatic that these recordings return to the catalogue; newcomers will find a lot of attractive low-density music that always sounds beguiling and is easy to live with.

-- Gramophone