Too Far

A Magic Like Thee is a setting of two poems by Lord Byron, “She Walks In Beauty” and “Stanzas For Music (There Be None of Beauty’s Daughters).” It employs word painting throughout to bring to life the vivid imagery in both poems. The first movement is slower and explores the contrast of light and darkness in the text, while the second movement is more driving and uses energetic rhythms idiomatic in pop and rock music. The piece was chosen by The Singers, a Minneapolis-based choral ensemble, out of nearly 400 submissions to be one of four pieces to receive its world premiere on their New Horizons concert in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on May 31, 2014.

Performed by The Singers, Matthew Culloton, conductor.

For more information: http://ajharbison.com/music/concert/a-magic-like-thee

A Magic Like Thee

Songs From My Shelf

Cross My Heart (Hope To Die)

Who I Am

Composed for the 2015 UMKC Conservatory Dance Collaboration, a collaborative project bringing composers and choreographers together to create new work. And See The Flaming Skies was choreographed by John Swapshire, and was premiered at the collaboration concert at UMKC on May 5, 2015.

And See The Flaming Skies

I Saw in the Night Visions uses cello techniques such as variations of sul tasto (playing near the fingerboard) and sul ponticello (playing near the bridge), as well as many different types of harmonics (playing an overtone rather than a normal note) to create the surreal atmosphere of a dream or trance-like vision. The piece begins with a melody played with normal technique, representing a person awake; harmonics are gradually introduced, representing the person falling asleep or into a trance, and eventually take over fully. The original melody goes through many transformations as the journey through the vision progresses. The vision becomes more and more intense, until the cello breaks out into running sixteenth notes played with normal technique (modified by tasto and ponticello), as the dream takes on a lifelike vividness and becomes more of a nightmare. The sixteenth notes end with the original melodic idea played frantically in the cello’s highest register. After a long tremolo that fades to silence, the original melody returns in several forms, before two quiet harmonic trills end the piece. I Saw in the Night Visions was composed for Eman Chalshotori, who premiered the piece in Kansas City, Missouri on February 2, 2016.

Performed by Eman Chalshotori.

For more information: http://www.ajharbison.com/music/concert/i-saw-in-the-night-visions

Comprehensive Exam Recording Project 2016

I Saw In The Night Visions [Live]

Five Scenes is a series of five independent yet interrelated character pieces for solo piano, each developing a single idea or affect. The “scene” of each movement is left to the imagination of the performer and listener.

Performed by MacKenzie Reed.

For more information: http://www.ajharbison.com/music/concert/five-scenes

Five Scenes IV

Five Scenes II

Five Scenes I

Yours [Single]

Yours

AJ Harbison is a composer and singer/songwriter currently living and working in Kansas City. His compositions include choral, instrumental, pop/rock, theatre and film music.