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James HARLEY
James Harley, born 1959, Vernon, B.C., Canada, began studying composition in
1980. Prior to that, he was active as a pianist, jazz and classical, played
percussion, and also studied electroacoustics at Western Washington University.
After graduating Magna cum laude in 1982, he took up residence in the UK in
order to study composition with Paul Patterson at the Royal Academy of Music.
Recipient of grants from the Canada Council and the Leverhulme Trust, among
others, Harley remained in London for three years, benefitting from a number of
performances and prizes. In 1985, having been awarded the prestigious
Mendelssohn Scholarship, he moved to Paris. There, Harley studied aesthetics
with Iannis Xenakis, musical acoustics at the Université de Paris, attended
seminars at IRCAM and the College de France (Pierre Boulez), and worked
extensively with the UPIC computer music system at CEMAMu.
While in Paris, Harley won a number of prizes, including two in the 1986 CBC
Radio Young Composers Competition in Canada. Then, in 1987, Harley moved
to Warsaw, thanks to a Polish Government Scholarship, to spend a year at the
Chopin Academy of Music. He attended the composition class of Wlodzimierz
Kotonski, participated in the Summer Courses for Young Composers organized
by the Polish Society for Contemporary Music, and had a piece premiered at the
1987 Warsaw Autumn Festival. In 1988, Harley returned to North America, taking
up doctoral studies at McGill University in Montreal. Under the guidance of Bruce
Pennycook and Bo Alphonce, he pursued research there in the domain of
computer-aided composition, developing CHAOTICS, compositional software
based on functions derived from chaos theory. Harley graduated in 1994 with his
D.Mus. in composition. Over the next year, supported by a major Artist's Grant
from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec, he composed a series of
chamber works, also teaching part-time in the Faculty of Music at McGill
University. In 1995, Harley took up a sabbatical replacement position as
Assistant Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, teaching
composition, electronic music, and contemporary music history/analysis. At the
same time, he completed a major commission for the Musiques-Echanges
festival in Montreal.
In the fall of 1996, Harley moved to Los Angeles, and taught part-time at
University of Southern California and California Institute of the Arts. In 1999, he
began teaching in Minnesota, directing the Music Technology program at
Minnesota State University Moorhead. He was granted a McKnight Composer
Fellowship in 2002. The university awarded him a Faculty Award for
Research/Creative Activity in Fall 2003. In 2004, Harley took up a new position at
the University of Guelph. There he teaches digital music and composition, among
other courses. In 2008, Harley was awarded a Leaders Opportunity Fund grant
from the Canada Foundation of Innovation to launch the Advanced Digital Audio
Production and Performance Studio at the University of Guelph. He has
continued to compose to various commissions, among them March Music
Moderne—Portland, Norman Burgess Memorial Fund, NUMUS, New Music
Concerts, Open Ears Festival, Transit Festival-Belgium, Transmission Ensemble,
Vancouver New Music, and Windsor Symphony. Various of Harley’s
compositions have been released on CD, and can be found on labels such as
Artifact, ATMA, Centrediscs, CMJ, McGill, PeP, Soundprints. Most notable is the
monograph disc, Neue Bilder (Centrediscs CMCCD 16010), done in collaboration
with New Music Concerts, Toronto. Harley has scores published by PWM, and
most of the rest can be obtained through the Canadian Music Centre.
Harley has written widely on new music, publishing articles and reviews
in Computer Music Journal, Contemporary Music
Review, Leonardo, Musicworks, Musical Times, Organised Sound, Tempo. His
book, Xenakis: His Life in Music (Routledge) was published in 2004, and a
second book, Xenakis: Kraanerg (Ashgate) in 2015. He also has chapters in
various books, including Lutoslawski Studies (Cambridge), The Oxford Handbook
on Computer Music, and Art of Immersive Soundscapes (Regina).