Profile of Andrew Harrison

Andrew Harrison composes music for film and theatre productions, as well as jazz and concert music.

He has produced numerous works for theatre, including the dramatic underscore for the Eagle Eyed Productions staging of The Laramie Project in 2005 in Victoria, Australia, as well as incidental music for the same company’s productions of the stage plays You Can’t Take It With You and Breaker Morant.  He has written music for numerous short features, including Simon (2009), At The End of The Day (2008), Bottom Dollar (2008), The Daily Grind (2008), Animal (2007), Deceased (2006), Eat The Suburbs (2006), Without Warning (2002) and Bean Dead (2000).

Andrew has also written chamber works, concert pieces and songs, many of which are available for purchase through the Australian Music Centre in Sydney, Australia. He is currently collaborating on an orchestral work with Detroit-based poet Jamaal 'Versiz' May.

Andrew directs and plays piano in The Andrew Harrison Trio, which is a vehicle for his compositions. He has performed at venues and festivals throughout Australia and the United States, both solo and with his trio, as well as with the groups SPAK and Spot The Phantom Dog.

Andrew worked as music assistant to Australian film composer Paul Grabowsky on his opera Love in the Age of Therapy, produced by Opera Australia, and The Streets of Hiralya, commissioned by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He has contributed articles on Australian jazz to the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, published by Oxford University Press in 2003. Andrew has taught in the History Department at the University of Melbourne, and was a guest lecturer in Jazz Composition at Monash University, Melbourne.

Andrew completed a Masters Degree in Composition with Professor Larry Sitsky at the Australian National University School of Music in 1999, and has studied composition and jazz performance with composer Anthony Davis and trombonist George Lewis at UCSD in San Diego, California.