Lou Harrison: “The Take-Home Pay Is A Melody”

Kyle Gann remembers Lou Harrison, who died recently at 85. “The ‘greatest living composer’ label some pasted on him in recent years was an uneasy fit. He was too one-of-a-kind personally, too multifaceted musically. His works contain passages of aimless wandering that are hard to defend to skeptics, yet emblematic of what we love about him: that he relished life and didn’t believe in hurrying.”