Michael Kieran Harvey

Michael Kieran Harvey was born in Sydney and studied piano with Alan Jenkins, Gordon Watson, and at the Liszt Academy, Budapest, under Sándor Falvai. Based in Tasmania, his career has been notable for its diversity and wide repertoire. He has especially promoted the works of Australian and contemporary composers, premiering more than 300 Australian works alone, and has recorded many solo CDs on various labels. He is on the guest faculty of the Australian National Academy of Music, Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Released in 2009, his CD Elektra was described by Clive O’Connell as the product of an “indefatigable master-pianist … pieces commissioned especially for his volcanic talent”. Harvey holds a PhD in composition and has recorded much of his own music. His homage to Zappa, 48 Fugues For Frank, was premiered at Mona Foma 2010 and won an AMC state award for best composition in 2011. His trio Deus est Fabula was premiered by Plexus at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s 2014 Metropolis series (available on PRTZL). A live CD/DVD of his Iyengar yoga and ensemble work Patañjali (2015) received an AMC/APRA Tasmanian State Award for Instrumental Work of the Year in 2016. Piano Sonata no. 3, Aporia, was premiered at the MSO’s 2016 Metropolis series. Piano sonatas nos. 4: A. Gramsci (on PRTZL), 5 (Piano Sonata #5: Greta), and 6 (Piano Sonata #6: 17 Graeme Lee prints) appeared between 2019 and 2021. His 90-minute Green Brain Cycle, after Frank Herbert, was premiered at Mona Foma in 2018 and released as The Green Brain. The epic Catalogue des Errances Bibliques for eight keyboardists and four percussionists followed in 2021.

Later releases include The Sparrow and the Mead Hall, with Four Ballades, Sonata #7 and Death Cap Mushroom Duo; a re-release of his twentieth-century programme Threnody; and Shichiseki, Australian and Japanese chamber music. He continues monumental cyclical works, including the APRA-nominated War Sonatas, honouring Peter Singer and long-time collaborator Arjun von Caemmerer while lamenting war and the rise of AI.

In 1993 Harvey became the first Australian to win a major international piano competition, the inaugural Ivo Pogorelich International Solo Piano Competition in Pasadena. Other awards include the Debussy Medal, Paris (1986), the Australian government’s Centenary Medal (2002), the 2009 APRA award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music, and the 2020 APRA Luminary award. His compositions have been performed in Europe, the UK, the Americas and Asia, and at major Australian festivals; they are held at the AMC. The Michael Kieran Harvey Scholarship, founded in 2006 to encourage future directions in Australian keyboard art music, has supported successive generations of pianists and composers.

In 2012 he gave the Peggy Glanville-Hicks address What would Peggy do?, on the cultural cringe in Australian classical music. A transcript is available here.