Harry Crowl

Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on October 6th, 1958, Harry Crowl studied music in his native town before going to the US. Although largely self-taught, he received some training in composition at the Juilliard School of Music, New York. His music has been performed and broadcast all over the world. Currently living in Curitiba he is the Artistic Director of the Federal University of Paraná’s Philharmonic Orchestra and has been a Professor at the School of Music and Fine Arts of Paraná (EMBAP) until his retirement, in 2019. In addition, he produces and presents programs on both classical and contemporary music for the State of Paraná Educational Radio (Rádio Paraná Educativa FM). Harry Crowl’s production includes all genres of instrumental and vocal music ranging from solo pieces to large orchestral works, from songs to opera, and also music for film and theater. His compositions’ catalog has more than 200 entries. His musical language results from a post-serial trend of atonality drifting among modal, tonal, and chromatic patterns supported by occasionally dense harmony or counterpoint, sometimes with striking contrasts between static and dynamic voicing. It also presents a powerful sense of color and idiomatic writing. He has been awarded 2012 and 2014 the Brazilian National Foundation for the Arts (FUNARTE) Commission Prize. Many orchestras, ensembles, and soloists such as “Ensemble Recherche”, “Ensemble Cross+Art”, Teodoro Anzelotti (Germany), "George Crumb Trio" (Austria), Egidius Streiff (Switzerland), "Ensemble Nord" (Denmark), "Moyzes Quartet" (Slovakia), Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra, “Ensemble Violoncelissimo”, “Traiect Ensemble”, “Cvartetul Florilegium” (Romania), Darya Filippenko (Belarus/Russia), “Trio Fibonacci” (Canada), "Grupo Novo Horizonte de São Paulo", “Banda Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo”, "Camerata Antiqua de Curitiba", Paraná Symphony Orchestra, “Orquestra Sinfônica do Teatro Nacional, Brasília” (Brazil) and Orchestre de Flutes Français have already commissioned and performed his music.

He has been accredited for the discovery of some late 18th and early 19^th-century sacred music by Brazilian composers, as well as the reconstruction and dissemination of many scores of that music. For the occasion of his 60th birthday, the Federal University of Paraná TV Station produced a documentary about his career named “Labyrinths – the Contemporary Music of Harry Crowl”, directed by Gabriel Snak. Many recitals and orchestral concerts took place in his homage all over Brazil. In 2020, already during the pandemic of COVID-19, he was invited to participate in the “Shadow and Hope” Project representing South America. He composed his String Quartet no.3 “Corona”, with a mixed choir, to be part of the “Pandemic Cantata”, comprised of 6 different choir and string quartet pieces by composers from 6 continents (Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Oceania). The project was an initiative of Philipp Amelung and the Community of Icking, Germany. It will be premiered in November 2021, in München.