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John Harle

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CURATIONS & PROVENANCE

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ARTIST/CREATIVE/EDUCATOR

Name: John Harle
City/Place: London
Country: United Kingdom
Hometown: Newcastle upon Tyne

Life & Work

Bio: John Harle is an Ivor Novello award-winning composer, record producer, and saxophonist whose work spans across musical genres from classical to contemporary pop.

John is the composer of operas, musical theatre shows, around fifty concert works and over 100 film and TV scores including the theme to BBC1's Silent Witness and the epic score to Simon Schama’s A History of Britain. He is the recipient of an Ivor Novello award and two Royal Television Society awards for Best Music.

Starting at the National Theatre in the late 1970's, John was an actor/musician, composer, musical director and instrumentalist for many years, including acting parts in plays by Edward Bond and Isaak Babel, musical directorships for Harrison Birtwistle and playing in the celebrated Guys and Dolls band for director Richard Eyre. John's own shows, A Quick Deco and To Those Born Later were featured at the National Theatre Platforms, The King's Head Islington, Hampstead New End Theatre and The Arts Theatre with actors Caroline Quentin, Jim Carter and John Golder. John's show Berlin Nights ran at The London Symphony Orchestra Pops series at The Barbican, featuring actors Ute Lemper and Albert Finney.

He was artistic advisor and producer to Sir Paul McCartney for six years, and other major collaborations have included albums and tours with Elvis Costello and Marc Almond.

A prominent media figure, he is a regular contributor to Radio 4 Front Row, and was a castaway on Desert Island Discs. He also contributes written articles to major publications.

John’s tribute album to Duke Ellington, The Shadow of the Duke was followed with collaborations with jazz artists such as Herbie Hancock and Andy Sheppard.

John was solo and lead saxophonist with the Michael Nyman Band for fifteen years, and was Musical Director of the band on tours in the US, UK and Japan.

He has been musical director and producer for Moondog, Herbie Hancock, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Elmer Bernstein, Imelda Staunton, Ute Lemper, Lesley Garrett, Albert Finney, Kathryn Tickell, Michael Nyman, Sir John Dankworth, Dame Cleo Laine and Marc Almond. He is the founder and producer of Sospiro Records.

As a saxophonist, his early work gained public acclaim with his Saxophone Concertos album on EMI Classics which is widely seen as the definitive recording of the major classical works, and his playing has been the catalyst for an outpouring of new concertos by composers including Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Marc Anthony Turnage, Sir John Tavener, Sally Beamish, Michael Nyman and Gavin Bryars.
John’s performance of Birtwistle's saxophone concerto Panic at the Last Night of the BBC Proms in 1995 was cited by many critics as the most controversial premiere of a new musical work since Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in 1913.
He has performed with countless orchestras and conductors worldwide and has sold over half a million CDs in the classical field alone.

John was appointed the youngest ever Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, starting the saxophone department at the age of 26, and his teaching has produced many of the leading players of today. He is now Professor of Saxophone and Composition at The Guildhall School, where he leads his own Master of Music course, as well as teaching academic modules in Musical and Cultural History.

He is the author of The Saxophone (Faber Music), the definitive reference work on saxophone playing and performance.

John is currently songwriting with Marc Almond (Soft Cell) for an album of pop torch songs for Sony/BMG, and writing a musical theatre piece, Mr Punch, with writer/director Patrick Marber. He is also arranger/producer for the new saxophone star Jess Gillam in a five album collaboration with Decca Classics.

He is the father of writer and curator Dr. Matthew Harle and Columbia Records composer/producer Danny L Harle.

Contact Information

Contact by Webpage: http://www.johnharle.com/contact.htm
Telephone: Jane Ward Office: (+44) 151 513 2716 Cell: (+44) 7710 495999

Media & Markets

▶ Charts/Scores: http://www.fabermusic.com/we-represent/harle-john
▶ Website: http://www.johnharle.com
▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/johnharle
▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UC8pYRJ__nGg9PPqRnCdR28Q
▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/3zgRzjZ520PZPhVAVCnpA9
▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/2GJN0DItN4sQUkYPlpGNrb
▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/2tzW6n8niui7ObKEX9zOW2
▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/0dirT2bncWgzSksQijF1ls
▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/2PR8A7XQ7ASnj6nUlKtQLJ
▶ Spotify 6: http://open.spotify.com/album/4AbTrHRfmcQoKJ7n8dJar4

Quotes, Notes & Etc. “Harle gallops across his musical terrain with the attitude of Axl Rose. Terrifyingly extreme and magnificently audacious, Harle is a powerful force in British Jazz and Pop, and has the integrity, passion and vision to challenge listeners”
ESQUIRE USA

“John Harle's music is complex, darkly humorous and full of ear-catching quirkiness. You're bowled over by the variety, energy and sheer size of his music. It merits every ounce of the effort put into it”
THE WASHINGTON SUNDAY TIMES

“The music of John Harle is very fast moving, urgently collaborative, often witty, sinewy, ironic and urban”
THE GUARDIAN

“Three gorgeous songs by John Harle sung by a totally credible Elvis Costello are only the most conspicuous highlights of saxophonist Harle's genre scramble 'Terror and Magnificence'. Harle’s own commanding musicianship and audacious composing act as this record's solid cement”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY USA

“He's an omnivorous enthusiast, a truly unfashionable state of mind in a self-conscious age of irony, but something which links him with the late American master, Leonard Bernstein”
THE INDEPENDENT

“Terror and Magnificence is very probably one of the finest suites to have come from the pen of a British composer in recent years. Harle is a virtuosic saxophonist but his writing talent is clearly as significant. A triumph all round”
THE HERALD

“It was like sitting down for dinner in a reliable restaurant and being presented with an hors d'oeuvre of cold sick. Among others I would have been happy to have chained Harle and Birtwistle, whose work has been called 'sonic sewage', naked to the railings outside as punishment”
NIGEL DEMPSTER - DAILY MAIL

“We all know that Marc Almond can sing but it still comes as a shock to hear his thrillingly drawn-out climax to Harle's "The Arrival of Spring", emoting words adapted from William Blake with operatic oomph”
THE INDEPENDENT (on 'Art Music') ****

“Harle is a renaissance man that defies categorization; there are moments of unearthly beauty - eerie, magical and oddly timeless”
JAZZWISE - USA

“Harle's style has an integrity all of its own”
THE GUARDIAN

"The composer John Harle and his librettist David Pountney have made an opera of the proper sort, and one which almost breaks the rules of the genre by appearing to work as drama as well as music. Spells are cast, angels are summoned, and the characters exchange views on the music of the spheres and other recondite matters, but as singers and actors in a theatrical space they succeed in holding your attention. Angel Magick proved to be a resounding success."
THE INDEPENDENT

“Harle's compositions are testament to the extraordinary versatility of this brilliant saxophonist”
THE INDEPENDENT

“This masterful album - wonderfully scary stuff”
THE SUN***** (on 'The Tyburn Tree')

“Beautiful and dramatic music”
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY (on 'The Tyburn Tree')

“A treat for the ears - epic, sweeping”
MUSIC OMH (on 'The Tyburn Tree')

“Lushly harmonised and ecstatically passionate”
THE TIMES

“Harle's rich, extravagant settings could have been written for the late 1960's Scott Walker”
THE ARTS DESK **** (on 'Art Music')

“John Harle's lurid The Little Death Machine, premiered in the late-night Prom, was full of spark as the saxophonist composer's solo soared, blasted and panted over ghoulish riffs, swooping samples and a manic orchestral dance groove. This now formidable creative figure often functions best in mixing genres”
THE INDEPENDENT

“This is a fascinating and beguiling album. Harle shows no sign soon of losing his magical powers of communication”
JAZZ VIEWS (on 'Art Music')

“Marvelously vigorous, ironic and atmospheric”
THE TIMES **** (on 'The Tyburn Tree')

“A stunning contemporary production”
PROG MAGAZINE **** (on 'The Tyburn Tree')

“Equally at home in all genres as composer and player, he is one of the most accomplished of that new generation of musicians that has successfully breached music's artificial and still too strictly observed boundaries”
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

"This summer's Proms presents its first operatic commission in the shape of an innovative piece by saxophonist and composer John Harle. To a libretto by David Pountney, and using a flamboyant cast of singers, an actor, dancer and 22-piece orchestra incorporating the viol consort Fretwork, Harle's Angel Magick, subtitled A Scientific Ritual in Seven Parts, explores the strange world of Elizabethan astrologer and alchemist John Dee.
Already premiered in a preview to considerable acclaim at the Salisbury Festival, Angel Magick seems to be just the right sort of forward-thinking new piece the Proms needs."
THE INDEPENDENT

“Harle is a saxophone legend”
BILD-ZEITUNG

“He must be the most sought-after saxophonist in the world now.”
THE AUSTRALIAN

"I could listen to John Harle play almost anything for hours"
THE FINANCIAL TIMES

“You MUST see the virtuosity and charisma of Harle as a musician - exciting, edgy performances from the hottest saxophonist around today. Seeing is believing”
Q MAGAZINE

“Hearing Harle, you can understand why composers are surprised and delighted by his artistry. His keenly imaginative playing directly echoes the inflections of the human voice, and his fine control of tone eliminates the sloppy wailing of some saxophonists that is such a pain”
THE GUARDIAN

“This is the most beautiful alto-playing since Johnny Hodges; and the most beautiful soprano-playing ever”
THE GRAMOPHONE

“British-born Harle is one of the most outstanding saxophonists today - a leading classical exponent of the saxophone in Europe and a formidable jazz composer and soloist - he gives the sax new credibility”
THE AUSTRALIAN

“It hit the audience between the eyes - it reached the soul of the saxophone”
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

“Mr Harle has become an eminent modern musician. He's a dazzling player, with an immense range of tones, and a magnetic musician”
THE NEW YORKER

"No-one else creates a sound quite like this: apparently floating weightlessly, yet robust”
THE OBSERVER

“A dazzling workout. Technical and emotional mastery - all of which were as child's play for John Harle”
THE NEW YORK TIMES (at Carnegie Hall)

“Thanks to Harle, the saxophone has grown in status in the twentieth century. It may yet emerge as the paragon of wind instruments - their finest singer”
THE OBSERVER

“John Harle adapts to any musical style that comes his way. He plays with originality, intelligence and fire”
THE NEW YORK TIMES

My Instruction

Lessons/Workshops: John’s private tuition and mentoring programme has assisted many of the leading saxophonists of today to achieve their aims, and is for classical, jazz and multi-genre players. The programme exists to further the instrumental, musical and creative development of saxophonists.
Instruction: http://www.johnharle.com/private-tuition-and-mentoring.htm

Clips (more may be added)

1:06:11
THE BALLAD OF JAMIE ALLAN - A Ballad Opera. Music by John Harle. Words by Tom Pickard
By John Harle

97 views
4:40
BACK TO BIRDLAND - Played by Guildhall Saxophones. July 2020.
By John Harle

111 views

This John Harle Vertex is within giant steps of all other vertexes in our matrix — and by extrapolation — within close, discoverable steps of the entire planet. Access...
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