Raga Cycle
24-Hours of Music Moving through Morning, Day, Evening, and Night
Raga Cycle is Michael Harrison's ambitious recording project, featuring planned collaborations with a range of musicians from around the world. The project consists of 8 albums of music based on Indian ragas, structures for melodic improvisation that capture a specific attitude, mood, spiritual reality, and time of day. In India they have been transmitted from teacher to student in arguably the oldest continuous aural tradition of classical music in the world. Raga Cycle is produced by composer Elliot Cole, for release on Bang on a Can’s Cantaloupe Music label. The music will also be the score to Academy Award nominee Bill Morrison’s multimedia project 24 Hours @ Once.
For over 45 years Harrison has also been a devoted student, practitioner and teacher of Indian classical music, adapting the ancient melodic science of raga to the piano. He continues the lineage that traces its roots to the 13th century, received from masters Pandit Pran Nath (alongside Terry Riley and La Monte Young) and Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan.
Harrison's approach to raga on the piano faithfully continues the music's essence while unfolding new possibilities of harmony, texture, and resonance. Raga Cycle is the capstone of his work to date, representing a definitive statement stemming from a deeply rooted understanding of Eastern and Western music traditions that generates a unique musical voice that is fresh to modern audience.