Sadie Harrison Recordings

Sadie Harrison was born in 1965 in Adelaide, Australia. Now based in Dorset, she works as a freelance composer in the UK and abroad. Her music has been performed internationally by some of the world’s top musicians with numerous radio and television broadcasts. Several CDs of her music (NMC, Métier, Sargasso, Toccata Classics, BML, Cadenza, Clarinet Classics, Prima Facie) have been released to critical
acclaim. Her works are published by UYMP, ABRSM and Recital Music.

She has been Composer-in-Residence with the American ensemble Cuatro Puntos, Composer-in-Association with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music and the first Composer-in-Residence with the Künstler Bei Wu Sculpture Park, Wesenberg, Germany, posts supported by Arts Council England International Development Grants, a Finzi Scholarship and a PRSF Composers’ Fund award. Sadie has been a Guest Director of the Irish Composition Summer School, is a Visiting Fellow to Goldsmiths College in recognition of her research work on Afghanistan, is Chair of the Board of Trustees for Sound World and a tutor and mentor with New Music in the South West and the South West Music School.

During 2015̶─16 a substantial collaborative project (Gulistan-e Nur: The Rosegarden of Light), working with US Ensemble Cuatro Puntos and students from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, resulted in tours in Europe and the USA and a CD with Toccata Classics. BBCR3 Record Review described the disc as ‘moving and intriguing’, and MusicWeb International as ‘engaging, mysterious, delightfully pointed
dances’. The 25-minute title work was broadcast complete on BBCR3 as part of the PRSF Women Make Music celebrations. The project was supported by two Arts Council England Grants for the Arts, a PRSF Women Make Music Award, and grants from RVW, Hinrichsen, New Music USA and the Ambache Charitable Trust in acknowledgement of the unique nature of the project which brought together music and musicians from Europe, America and Asia. The symphonic work Sapida-Dam-Nau (New Dawn) commissioned with funds from the Finzi Trust was premiered by the Afghanistan Women’s Orchestra at the closing concert of the World Economic Forum, Davos in January 2017 with subsequent performances in Geneva, Weimar and Berlin.

Reviews of a portrait CD by Toccata Classics include: Observer, ‘disc of glitteringintensity’; BBC Music Magazine, ‘beautiful and intriguing’; Fanfare, ‘a special, fragile
space’. Her 1917 carol As-salāmu ʿalaykum Bethlehem has been described as ‘daringly wild, so ebullient and confident in its expression of joy and optimism that the carol’s culmination sounds positively feral. Utterly amazing’ (5:4) and ‘a riot of sound that
bows least to the saccharine tendencies of the season. Even whilst pushing the harmonic envelope the result feels like a great shout of joy’ (Composition Today).

Performances have taken place at the International Mozart Festival in Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg and Stellenbosch, at Late Music York, Bergen, Nicosia, Tennessee, Club Inégales (London), Bristol, Seaton (Devon), Isle of Raasay, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, National Portrait Gallery, British Museum, Wilton’s Music Hall, Granada, Sydney, the USA Hartford Women Composers Festival, Brighton
Fringe Festival, Institute of Cultural Diplomacy, Berlin.

For several years, Sadie also pursued a secondary career as an archaeologist. Reflecting this interest in the past, many of Sadie’s compositions have been inspired by the traditional musics of old and extant cultures with cycles of pieces based on the folk music of Afghanistan, Lithuania, the Isle of Skye, the Northern Caucasus and the UK.