Read below about Randall Harlow's Artistic projects
Sonata Quasi Coltrane
Extemporizations on the Orgelpark Hyperorgan
Recorded on the combined Utopa Baroque Organ and Sauer Organ at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, in this album I utilize the cutting-edge Sinua action and interface system to explore this hyperorgan’s unique affordances for expressive key touch controlling spectral dynamics and distortion. This album’s approach to extemporization is modeled after the artistic and collaborative processes of John Coltrane and his quartet, from his late bebop through modal and free jazz periods.
Coming, Spring 2024
Spring, 2024
dreams of dharma
dreams of dharma represents the first of a forthcoming triptych of albums inspired by the American beat writers of the 1950s, inspired not only by the literature they produced, but by their lived pursuit of spiritual enlightenment, joie de vivre and beatification of those qualities that make us most human.
Taking inspiration from Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel, The Dharma Bums, 'dreams of dharma' is an hour-long deep-listening extemporization on the Baroque Organ at Cornell University, recorded in a single take after five days of sonic exploration on the instrument. This fully-mechanical organ, built strictly using material techniques of the 17th-century and meticulously voiced by Munetaka Yokota, possess an unsurpassed spectrum of sound possibilities, every key and stop presenting an artist with a rich palette of sound from whispy wind, gossamer overtones, microtonal pitch bends and interference beats, to glorious full pipe tone.
Rather than play the instrument in the usual manner, pulling out stops fully and playing keyboards with the hands and feet, I places wedges in the keys in order to free my hands to manipulate the stop knobs, limiting the wind supply to pipes in order to explore the liminal space between noise and pitch, wind and tone. Additionally, I place microphones throughout the organ case to sample and loop on the fly, creating complex spectral landscapes and clouds of sound.
Organon Novus
Contemporary Organ Works by American Masters
25 composers, 25 works, 25 years, 1990-2015
The most comprehensive single recording ever produced of contemporary American organ music, ORGANON NOVUS is a three-disc anthology featuring twenty-five works by major American non-organist composers from the past twenty-five years, including twenty world premiere recordings. ORGANON NOVUS was awarded a New Music USA Project grant and a Recording Grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the first organ recording to be awarded either of these highly coveted national grants. Recorded on the historic E. M. Skinner organ in Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago.
Featuring Matthew Andreini, percussion, and Stephen Burns and Randy Grabowski, trumpet
* World Premiere Recording
Larry Polansky, Sunday Organ Piece for Church *
Shulamit Ran, Hallel *
Erik Santos, Star Rising *
Jonathan Schwabe, New and Improved Dances with trumpet *
Roberto Sierra, Fantasia Cromática *
Augusta Read Thomas, Angel Tears and Earth Prayers with trumpet *
Joan Tower, Ascent
Aaron Travers, Exodus *
Ken Ueno, An Idea of Order *
George Walker, Spires
Christian Wolff, Celesta *
John Zorn, Là-Bas *
Samuel Adler, From Generation to Generation *
Matt Darriau, Diapason Fall *
Michael Daugherty, An Evangelist Drowns
Lukas Foss, War and Peace *
Jennifer Higdon, Meditation from Ceremonies
Tom Johnson, 55 Chords *
David Lang, Ordinary *
Libby Larson, On a Day of Bells *
John Anthony Lennon, Misericordia *
John Liberatore, Memetics *
Alvin Lucier, Sizzles with percussion *
Ursula Mamlok, Festive Sounds *
Nico Muhly, The Revd Mustard His Installation Prelude
TransCendante
Franz Liszt's Transcendental Etudes transcribed for organ
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Études d'exécution transcendante (1852)
I. Preludio (0:54)
II. Molto vivace (2:51)
III. Paysage (4:35)
IV. Mazeppa (7:22)
V. Feux follets (4:36)
VI. Vision (5:18)
VII. Eroica (4:49)
VIII. Wilde jagd (5:25)
IX. Ricordanza (8:46)
X. Appassionata (4:56)
XI. Harmonies du soir (8:23)
XII. Chasse-neige (5:18)
Grandes études de Paganini (1851)
IV. Arpeggio (2:32)
III. La campanella (5:18) from the Busoni version
Randall Harlow’s debut album features the world's first complete organ transcription of the legendary Études d'exécution transcendante by Franz Liszt, as well as two transcriptions from Liszt's Grandes études de Paganini, '“La Campanella” and “Arpeggio”
In addition to raising the bar for virtuoso organ technique, the act of transcription and performance of these fundamentally non-organ-like, idiomatic piano pieces functioned as an Artistic Research project exploring new gestures and figurations for achieving complex sonic textures on the organ—transcending, so to speak, historic conventions of organ playing and notation. Recorded on the historic 1927 Casavant organ at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota.
The scores for these transcriptions are available under Transcriptions above.
