Ross Harris: first the dream, then reality

The idea came first, the music followed.

It was a chance remark made by his wife as she was wondering around the house which sparked Ross Harris's latest composition.

"Prendre ses rêves pour des réalités," she said. (French, at one point, was her second language.)

It's the title of his latest work, which the NZ Trio will take around Aotearoa as part of its third Homeland tour next month.

The thing is, Harris still doesn't exactly know what it means.

Make your dreams come true? Take your dreams for reality?

Harris was open to suggestions when he discussed his latest opus with Bryan Crump on RNZ Concert's Three to Seven.

If the translation is difficult to pin down, Harris likes it that way. His latest work is ambiguous from the start - even its time signature is fluid.

"What, like 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 4, 1 2, 1 2 3?" suggested Crump helpfully.

"Seldom as regular as that for that long," Harris replied.

"It's actually the ambiguity of this which interested me, and what this piece is partly about. You want people to think, what actually is this? What is this strange experience I'm having with this music? That's what I'd like listeners to feel."

When he's not being one of Aotearoa's senior composers, Harris is one of nation's leading creators of klezmer music, through his membership of the Wellington group The Kugels.

It was Harris's ability to play the accordion that landed him a role in the Wellington band, both as a player and a composer, something he values just as much as his work writing for classical outlets.

"The music is so different from writing a symphony. You just have a melody and some chords and you really have to cut that down to the bare bones."

The Kugels' music is rooted in conventional harmony, but what's Harris's attitude towards tonality in his classical works?

He's probably moved towards a more tonal world as his music has developed, but he still acknowledges the role of the New Viennese School.

Wasn't Schoenberg's twelve-tone row approach to writing music a bit of a 'cul-de-sac'? asked Crump.

"I would say that would be true, because he did think it was the key to the future," says Harris. But that won't stop him from spicing up his harmonies with the odd atonal mismatch.

His biggest influence these days? Shostakovich.

Whatever the approach, Harris doesn't struggle with an inability to turn his daydreams into music.

"I don't do much else in my life and I've had a lot of practice."

Does he use a computer - and computer composing software - to compose these days?

Yes.

"You see, I started in electronic music so having some kind of mock-up, an approximation of what a piece is going to be like, I find very useful and an easy way of getting back to the piece. After a night of watching sport, I can put the machine on in the morning and remember where the piece is at."

Ambiguous, versatile, disciplined. Add 'prolific' to the descriptors.

There's lots of unperformed music under Harris's desk, including three operas in the bottom drawer. One about Rasputin, one about Anthony and Cleopatra, and a collaboration with Vincent O'Sullivan about Freda du Faur, the first woman to climb Aoraki Mt Cook, who had the misfortune of being lesbian in the early 1900s.

"She had a woman partner and they both went over to England where they were separated and locked up. This is after this heroic climbing, and on their way back to New Zealand her partner jumped off the ship in the middle of the ocean."

But it doesn't bother Marris so much if things don't get performed. His priority is getting what's in his head out in the real world.

"I do have some health issues, which makes it clear I need to get things done."

When he delivered the 2022 Lilburn Lecture, Harris talked about his sometimes spiky relationship with his stock and station agent father, who struggled to understand his love of music.

That hasn't stopped Harris from inheriting his father's love of rugby and cricket.

He used to compose while watching test cricket at the Basin Reserve in the silence between overs. That was until the stadium started playing canned music in loud speakers.

And he may well be getting up early to watch the Rugby World Cup final.

Likely winners? The All Blacks.

Now that'd make an interesting topic for an opera.