John Harle
John Harle performing in Volker Schlöndorff's The Michael Nyman Songbook (1992)
Background information
Born	September 20, 1956
Origin	Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Genre(s)	Classical
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instrument(s)	Saxophone, Keyboards, Clarinet
Years active	1973-present
Label(s)	Hannibal Records EMI Classics Argo Records Unicorn-Kanchana
Associated acts	Michael Nyman Band
Website	http://www.johnharle.com/

John Harle (born 20 September 1956 in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom) is a saxophonist and composer. Attracted to minimalist music, he became a founding member of the Michael Nyman Band, with which he performed from 1981-1999.

Biography

Harle began as a clarinetist and served as solo clarinetist in the Band of the Coldstream Guards. He studied at the Royal College of Music and graduated with a 100% final mark.

Harle founded an avant-garde cabaret ensemble called the Berliner Band, in which he played saxophone.

He performed at Peanuts, a jazz club in London's East End.

Harle heard alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges perform with Duke Ellington's band in the early 1970s.

Harle performed Harrison Birtwistle's concerto for saxophone titled "Panic" in the Royal Albert Hall in 1995.

He has worked with Sir Paul McCartney on projects such as "Shadow Cycle", "Standing Stone", and "Ecce cor Meum".

Compositions

• Foursquare (1980; saxophone quartet)
• The Golden Demon (1995; saxophone, brass ensemble)
• Composed and arranged music for The Shadow of the Duke (1992)
• Angel Magick (1997; opera) (Libretto by David Pountney)
• Silencium Suite (1998; two sopranos, saxophone, orchestra)
• The Little Death Machine (2002; saxophone, orchestra)
• The Ballad of Jamie Allan (2004; chamber opera)
• Terror and Magnificence (1996), which he calls "an extended work joining classical and rock singing (Sarah Leonard and Elvis Costello), a string quartet, club dance grooves and 14th century French poetry, with his own lyrical sax conversing and improvising with the powerful tenor sax of Andy Sheppard".
• He wrote the score for Simon Schama's "History of Britain".

From roughly 1973 to 1980, his composing methods were driven by a strictly 12-note serial-music system, and by that period's avant-garde, dominated by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Recordings

• Mrs Beeton’s Christmas Plum Pudding[1] - Echo WMEF00632
• Silencium[2] - Argo 4583562
• Terror and Magnificence[3] - Argo 4526052
• John Harle's Saxophone Songbook, recorded 22 August 1995 - Unicorn label
• Saxophone Concertos[4], 7 April 1998, EMI Classics Red Line #72109 (Debussy, Ibert, Glazunov, Villa-Lobos, et al), Orchestra of Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, dir. Sir Neville Marriner

References

1. External links
   • John Harle's homepage at Chester Music
   • John Harle biography at Orchestra of the Swan