Text by Dawoud Kringle
It is with deep sadness that the members of MFM acknowledge the passing of Michael Harrison. Michael died in New York City on April 17, 2026, at the age of 67. The cause of death was complications from pancreatic cancer.
Michael Harrison was a unique classical composer known for redefining the role of Just Intonation in the American canon and for pioneering its use on the piano. He was born to David and Ann Hill Harrison on October 24, 1958, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. His father was a prominent mathematician on the faculty at Princeton University and the University of Oregon at Eugene. Harrison’s paternal grandfather, George Russell Harrison, a physicist and professor of experimental physics, was the Dean of Sciences at MIT. The George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory is named for him.
Harrison attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and then the University of Oregon, Juilliard, and the Manhattan School of Music. He remained in New York to study with La Monte Young, living in Young’s loft alongside him and his wife, the artist Marian Zazeela. Harrison learned to tune Young’s custom Bösendorfer piano in Young’s Just Intonation tuning. He later became the only other person, besides Young, ever to perform Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano.
Harrison created the “harmonic piano,” a modified grand piano capable of playing 24 notes per octave using just Intonation. The instrument allows for “pure” tuning, creating rich, resonant, and often orchestral-sounding chords that combine Indian classical music ragas with Western classical and minimalist traditions. The piano is presently located in the archives of the Manhattan School of Music in New York City for study by composition students.
One of Harrison’s most famous works, Revelation (2005), was described by the music critic Tim Page as “the most brilliant and original extended composition for solo piano since the early works of Frederic Rzewski.” It placed him directly in the lineage of his teachers, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Pandit Pran Nath, the Indian classical vocalist known for his profound influence on American minimalist composers. His work with Pran Nath served as the foundation for Harrison’s blending of Eastern and Western musical traditions.
Before the creation of Revelation, Harrison
His pedagogical accomplishments include the founding of the American Academy of Indian Classical Music in New York City and the Creative Music Intensive program at Arts, Letters & Numbers in Troy, New York. He received a Guggenheim in composition (2018) as well as several awards, honors, and fellowships.
Michael Harrison was a friend of Musicians For Musicians, and his contributions to MFM were invaluable. He gave the talk for “Music Is Essential” ZOOM Talk Event #2: Sharing an Experiential Workshop with Indian Ragas ( Report: MFM ZOOM Talk Event w. Michael Harrison & Roger Blanc), and was featured on the 31st MFM Speaks Out Podcast (“MFM SPEAKS OUT” EP 31: Michael Harrison on Bridging Indian and Western Classical Music » DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY). He was also featured in several articles and reviews on doobeedoobeedoo.info.
At the time of his death, he was working on his Raga Cycle, an aggregation and synthesis of his lifetime of study and practice of Hindustani raga, which he received from his teachers Pandit Pran Nath and Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan. The complete Cycle was to be a series of albums and a book of piano compositions designed to chart the hours of the day; the first installment, Evening Light, was released in March on Cantaloupe Records.
Michael Harrison is survived by his wife, Marina, his sister, JoEllen, and two nieces and two nephews.
Funeral services will be held on Friday, April 24, 2026, at 11 am at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, 302 West 91st Street, New York, NY.
Donations in Michael’s memory can be made to the Michael Harrison
