Dr Andrew Harrison

Dr Andrew Harrison is a composer, pianist, researcher and educator. His creative work spans art music, jazz, theatre and film. A strong interest in the relationship between composition, history and narrative underpins Harrison's musical output and artistic philosophy, which leading new music exponents in Australia and the United States have performed and championed. In 2020, Andrew’s doctoral thesis “Sounding Out The Past” received the ANU’s J.G. Crawford Prize for Interdisciplinary Research, for his examination into whether musical works inspired by historical events can offer alternative perspectives on the past.

His recent creative outputs include Time Is Truth (2022), Lament for Matthew Shepard (2022), If Not In This World (2018), Hum (2016), Gassed Shell (Severe) (2014) and The Drumfire Was Incessant, and Continued All Night With Unabated Fury (2012). Andrew’s recent publications include the book chapters “If Not In This World: memorialising the personal narrative of war and its aftermath with music” in After The Armistice: Empire, Endgame and Aftermath (2021) and “Sounds from the trenches: Australian composers and the Great War,” in The British Empire and the Great War: Culture, Identity, Memory (2017), both published by Routledge.