Michael Harrison & Ina Filip
Biographie Michael Harrison & Ina Filip
Michael Harrison
Composer/pianist Michael Harrison (called "an American maverick" by Philip Glass) forges a new approach to composition through just intonation (the system of tuning based on pure harmonic proportions). His works blend classical music traditions of Europe and North India. He is a Guggenheim Fellowship and NYFA Artist Fellowship recipient.
Michael Harrison creates dedicated tuning systems for many of his works. He pioneered a structural approach to composition in which the proportions of harmonic relationships organically determine other musical elements such as pitch, duration, and dynamics. He also invented the "harmonic piano," a grand piano that plays 24 notes per octave, documented in the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Harrison seeks expressions of universality via the physics of sound - music that brings one into a state of concentrated listening as a meditative and even mind-altering experience.
His release Seven Sacred Names (Cantaloupe 2021) was called "music of positively intoxicating beauty" by Steve Smith in The New Yorker, and features performances by Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, violinist Tim Fain, cellist Ashley Bathgate, and others, with Harrison on piano. Just Constellations commissioned and recorded by Roomful of Teeth (New Amsterdam 2020), was called "glacially beautiful" and "luminous" by Alex Ross in The New Yorker and selected for NPR's Best 100 Songs of 2020 and Bandcamp's Best of Contemporary Classical 2020. His Time Loops album (Cantaloupe 2012) was chosen for NPR's Top 10 Classical Albums of 2012. His work, Revelation (Cantaloupe 2007), achieved international recognition and was called "…the most brilliant and original extended composition for solo piano since the early works of Frederic Rzewski three decades ago" by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page, and named one of the Best Classical Recordings of 2007 by The New York Times and Boston Globe.
Harrison's music has been performed at BAM Next Wave Festival, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Park Avenue Armory, the Louvre, Centre Pompidou, MASS MoCA, Big Ears Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, the United Nations, Klavier Festival Ruhr, and the Sundance Film Festival. His recent engagements include the Minimal Music Festival at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, the Italian Virtual Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2021, the Mattatoio Museum in Rome, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
Harrison collaborates with performers including Alarm Will Sound, Cello Octet Amsterdam, Maya Beiser, Clarice Jensen, Del Sol String Quartet, and Contemporaneous, who have commissioned his works using just intonation. He has also collaborated with visual and media artists, choreographers, and filmmaker Bill Morrison.
While still an undergraduate student, Harrison met composer La Monte Young. Soon Young brought him to New York as his protégé to study composition, performance, and Indian classical music. Harrison was the exclusive tuner for Young's custom Bösendorfer concert grand and became the only person other than the composer to perform Young's 6-hour The Well-Tuned Piano.
Living in Young's Tribeca loft during this formative decade, Harrison was immersed in the world of minimal music and art. Terry Riley became a close friend and mentor within a broader circle that included John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Marian Zazeela, and the Dia Art Foundation's founders (the patrons of Harrison's work with Young). Most importantly, he became a disciple of Young and Riley's music guru, Pandit Pran Nath, traveling to India with Pran Nath and Riley for extensive study and practice periods.
Harrison's residencies include MacDowell, Yaddo, Camargo, McColl Center, Ucross, Djerassi, Millay, Bogliasco, La Napoule, I-Park, MASS MoCA, and the Visiting Artists program of the American Academy in Rome. In addition to the Guggenheim, his awards include an Aaron Copland Recording Grant, Classical Recording Foundation Award, IBLA Foundation Prize, American Composers Forum residency and performance in the Havana Contemporary Music Festival, and a New Music USA Grant. Harrison received his Masters in Composition, studying with Reiko Fueting, at Manhattan School of Music.
Ina Filip
is a Brazilian-born, Québec-based vocalist and composer whose work bridges modal improvisation, contemporary composition, and classical traditions. Known for her emotionally resonant voice and genre-defying versatility, she draws from years of rigorous study in Indian classical music, Brazilian musicality, and experimental vocal art to shape a vocal language that is both deeply personal and expansively collaborative.
Her artistic foundation was forged through immersive training in Dhrupad, the most microtonal and meditative form of Indian classical music, under the guidance of the Gundecha Brothers. Dhrupad’s precision in tuning, focus on resonance, and integration of breath and stillness continue to ground her evolving practice as a composer and improviser. In parallel, her improvisational practice has been profoundly shaped by Bobby McFerrin’s vocal approach, which she has explored, studied, and embodied through years of playful experimentation and deep listening.
Ina is currently co-creating Raga Cycle, a multi-album arc with composer and pianist Michael Harrison, a Guggenheim Fellow and pioneer of harmonic tuning systems. As lead vocalist and co-composer, she shapes a body of work that merges raga-inspired modal improvisation with minimalist piano and electroacoustic aesthetics. The first album is complete, the second and third are in production.
Her collaborative scope extends into interdisciplinary creation. She co-created the music for 24 Hours at Once, an installation with Harrison and filmmaker Bill Morrison, presented by Art Letters & Numbers in New York, and contributed to Passage, a project with Harrison, musicians, and visual artist Nina Elder, presented at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts in North Carolina.
Ina’s voice has also appeared in contexts ranging from ambient electroacoustic scores to raga-based vocal polyphonies. Her projects include Cantos de Ma, a solo album centered on voice and silence, and Polyphonic Malkauns, a contemporary reinterpretation of raga with composer Payton MacDonald. She has contributed to the global electronic scene, recording with producers such as Soohan and Adham Shaikh, whose works featuring her vocals reached wide international audiences.
Across all her projects, Ina’s voice carries the discipline of long-dedicated practice and the freedom of improvisation, inviting listeners into a space of resonance, presence, and expanded perception.
