Homage à Jeanne Lee by Elisabeth Harnik
„A tribute to a singer, dancer, poet, composer, improviser, educator, and working mother who embraced avant-garde and took a multidisciplinary and intercultural approach to her work, always listening with the entire body for the miracle.“ (Elisabeth Harnik) “On 52nd Street I realized Jean [sic] Lee is clothed and fed by her voice. That’s the same street my aunts and uncles were born andblack on, so 52nd and 10th means something to me – like a people who come out with what they can carry: love, sweat, blood and song. Though everything we know is wonderful and rich, we, as a people, hide, to keep it safe. Jean Lee don’t. [. . .] We got a woman among us who isn’t afraid of the sound of her own voice.” Lee by Harnik
(From Ntozake Shange’s review of a 1981 performance at Soundscape in New York)
Elisabeth Harnik
Elisabeth Harnik (*1970, Graz) received her first degree in classical piano performance and subsequently studied composition with Beat Furrer at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Her compositional activity has resulted in commissions and performances of her works in Austria and abroad, for example at musikprotokoll Graz, Klangspuren Schwaz, Wien Modern, the Transart Festival in Bolzano, Munich Opera Festival, Styriarte, EarFest Duisburg, Soundings Festival London, Moving Sounds Festival New York, or the Graz Opera. As an improvisational musician, she has performed at festivals as a soloist and in ensembles with renowned figures of contemporary jazz since 1996. To Harnik, composing and improvising means alternating between the calculated and the unexpected: reflecting on the sonic vocabulary that arises – whether through preconceived or spontaneous interventions – and tracing a subliminal inner structure. CD releases document her work as a composer and pianist. She has been awarded numerous scholarships and prizes, including the SKE Publicity Award in 2019 and the Andrzej Dobrowolski Composition Scholarship awarded by the Styrian state government in 2022.