Ross Talbot Harris (born 1 August 1945) is a New Zealand

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

, multi-instrumentalist, and music educator.

Life and career

Born in

Amberley Amberley may refer to: Places Australia *Amberley, Queensland, near Ipswich, Australia *RAAF Base Amberley, a Royal Australian Air Force military airbase United Kingdom * Amberley, Gloucestershire, England * Amberley, Herefordshire, England ...

, Harris was educated at the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury ( mi, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was ...

and

Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington ( mi, Te Herenga Waka) is a university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. The university is well know ...

; studying with

Douglas Lilburn Douglas Gordon Lilburn (2 November 19156 June 2001) was a New Zealand composer. Early life Lilburn was born in Whanganui and spent his early years on the family sheep farm in the upper Turakina River valley at Drysdale. He attended Waitaki Bo ...

at the latter institution. He succeeded Lilburn as the professor of electro-acoustic music at Victoria University; a position he maintained for over thirty years. A composer with wide interests, Harris's compositions have spanned from

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...

works like

symphonies A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning com ...

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

s, and

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

, to

electro-acoustic music Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instrumen ...

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

, and

rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...

. He is a founding member of the Wellington-based band Free Radicals whose pioneering experiments in electro-acoustic music in the 1980s influenced the development of

electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that started in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mostly used to r ...

in the 1990s. He achieved significant critical attention for his 1984

''Waituhi: Te Ora O Te Whanau'', the first opera created in the

Māori language Māori (), or ('the Māori language'), also known as ('the language'), is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of mainland New Zealand. Closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and ...

, and in the 1986 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was awarded the

Queen's Service Medal The Queen's Service Medal is a medal awarded by the government of New Zealand to recognise and reward volunteer service to the community and also public service in elected or appointed public office. It was established in 1975 and is related to ...

for public services. Harris was the resident composer of the

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (APO) is a symphony orchestra based in Auckland, New Zealand. Its principal concert venue is the Auckland Town Hall. The APO is the accompanying ensemble for performances by New Zealand Opera, NZ Opera and th ...

in 2005 and 2006; during which time he composed three symphonies for that orchestra. In 2014 he was awarded the Laureate Award by

Arts Foundation of New Zealand 'The Arts Foundation of New Zealand Te Tumu Toi is a New Zealand arts organisation that supports artistic excellence and facilitates private philanthropy through raising funds for the arts and allocating it to New Zealand artists. The concept ...

. He has won the SOUNZ Contemporary Award from the

Australasian Performing Right Association APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwr ...

five times. As an instrumentalist, Harris has worked as a French hornist in the

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) is a symphony orchestra based in Wellington, New Zealand. The national orchestra of New Zealand, the NZSO is an autonomous Crown entity owned by the Government of New Zealand, per the New Zealand Sympho ...

and as an

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

player in the Wellington klezmer group The Kugels. He has also used many electro-acoustic instruments in his work with the Free Radicals.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Ross 1945 births Living people People from Amberley, New Zealand University of Canterbury alumni New Zealand composers Accordionists Classical horn players Recipients of the Queen's Service Medal Victoria University of Wellington alumni Academic staff of the Victoria University of Wellington