Michael Kieran Harvey


Michael Kieran Harvey is an Australian pianist and composer whose career has been notable for its diversity and wide repertoire. He is renowned for commissioning, performing and composing new music. He has especially promoted the works of Australian composers, such as Carl Vine, most of whose piano music he has recorded and much of which was written for him. He is also particularly associated with the piano music of Olivier Messiaen.
According to critic Clive O'Connell in The Age: "Few Australian pianists can touch Michael Kieran Harvey, one of the most exciting exponents of contemporary music in the country".

Biography

Family

Michael Kieran Harvey was born in Sydney in 1961. He says that as a child he had great difficulty in coming to terms with being a musician, as he played four different codes of football and was also involved in surf lifesaving. His brother Dominic Harvey was head of brass at the Australian National University and is a noted conductor; his sister is the pianist Bernadette Harvey-Balkus; and his other sister Rowan Harvey-Martin is a violinist and noted conductor. His mother Anne had to abandon plans to become a concert pianist when her father died in her mid-teens; and his father Francis was a journalist and for a time a freelance cellist. He is married to pianist Dr Arabella Teniswood-Harvey. Harvey has two children, Isabella and Raphael, from his first wife, the pianist Denise Papaluca.

Background

Michael studied piano at the Canberra School of Music with Alan Jenkins, at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under Gordon Watson, and at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, under Sándor Falvai. He first came to international prominence by jointly winning with Edith Chen the 1993 International Solo Piano Competition founded by Ivo Pogorelić in Pasadena, California, in which he performed Carl Vine's Piano Sonata No. 1. At the time, this was the world's richest piano competition. He entered the competition not believing he could win, but as an excuse to go to Los Angeles to see Frank Zappa, who was very ill, and to seek permission to play his piano music in public. However, Zappa died on the day of the finals and Harvey did not meet him. His manager from Columbia Artists Management was Ronald Wilford, who was Glenn Gould's manager, and at that stage Ivo Pogorelić's own manager.

Career

He has premiered many new Australian concertos by composers such as Yitzhak Yedid, Carl Vine, Nigel Westlake, Paul Grabowsky, Larry Sitsky, Barry Conyngham, Don Kay, James Hullick, Adam Simmons, Eve Duncan, Simon Barber and Cathy Applegate. He has given Australian premieres of important international works by Louis Andriessen, Stefan Wolpe, Donald Martino, Frank Zappa, Jon Lord, Keith Emerson, Beat Furrer and Milton Babbitt.
Michael Kieran Harvey has worked with conductors such as Edo de Waart, Reinbert de Leeuw, Diego Masson, Markus Stenz and Kristjan Järvi, and has collaborated with the Arditti Quartet, the Netherlands and Luxembourg Philharmonics, the , Jon Lord, Keith Emerson, and Paul Grabowsky. He regularly appears as soloist with Australian symphony orchestras.
He has performed and recorded most of Olivier Messiaen's works involving piano to high critical acclaim. In 2005 he released a live 3-CD recording of the Australian premiere of the entire featuring Peter Cundall as narrator. Despite his close association with Messiaen's music Harvey is an atheist, who describes himself as having escaped Catholicism in his early teens, as did Frank Zappa.
He has recorded Carl Vine's , much of which was written for him. He commissioned Nigel Westlake's Piano Sonatas I and II and Piano Concerto and gave the premiere performances. Harvey has commissioned and recorded major Australian piano cycles by Larry Sitsky, Keith Humble, Elliot Gyger, Mike Nock, Andriàn Pertout, Richard Vella, Alan Walker, John McCaughey, Graham Hair and Martin Friedel, and promoted major works by Helen Gifford, Mark Pollard, Kate Neal, Warren Burt, Eve Duncan, Colin Spiers, Kate Tempany, Tom Henry and Brett Dean.

Compositions

Harvey holds a PhD in composition and has recorded much of his own music.

Recordings

Legacy

In 2005 the Michael Kieran Harvey Scholarship was established and funded by Susan Mary Remington in honour of his contribution to Australian music, and to encourage future directions in keyboard art music.
Recipients: 2006 - Cameron Roberts; 2008 - Ashley Hribar; 2010 - Zubin Kanga; 2012 - Aura Go and Adam Cook; 2014 - Dr James Hullick; 2016 - Alex Rainieri and Nicholas Young; 2018 - Rohan Drape; 2020 - Dr Anthony Pateras.

Honours