Harrison is an Australian singer-songwriter, musician and artist. Primarily known as a drummer and percussionist, she also plays piano, guitar and sings.
Harrison has been playing piano since the age of five. Surrounded by music as a child with both her parents musicians, she topped music in year 12 and went on to the Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, learning from the Chair of Percussion. In fear of the unstable, somewhat tumultuous music industry, she went and completed a business degree as a safety net instead of pursuing a degree in music, yet always taught music and gigged on the side. After her corporate history of Company Director for one of Australia’s largest renewable energy companies as well as the Director of an Australian charity that creates music festivals for charitable causes, Harrison has chosen to return to her passion and become a recording artist, releasing her first single ‘Waterplane’ in 2015, shortly followed by ‘Good Enough’ in 2016.
Harrison released her debut Album ‘Plan B’ on 7 October 2016. Between 200-300 friends, media, fellow musicians and recording artists attended Harrison’s Vernissage. The Vernissage took place at an exclusive Darlinghurst gallery where each of the 15 songs on the album had an audio-visual station that included the final song as well as demos, behind the scenes videos and original voice recordings, taking her listeners on a journey. Harrison believes that music is something not merely to be heard, but experienced. She arranged activities for some of the stations, for example, track 10: Lie With Her had a confession box where confessions were later typed and distributed on the song page: (http://harrisontheartist.com/song-lie-with-her/). Track 9: Wait, Listeners were blindfolded. Track 5: Ladder, a snakes and ladders board found listeners rolling the dice and playing together. Other stations had thank you cards and posted out the next day, or tags with peoples names written on where if the timing was different in their lives they may have ended up with that person (Track 13: It’s Not Our Time). Harrison has recorded in studios in Europe and Australia and owns her own company in music tuition, sharing with others the joy in making and playing music.
In 2017, Harrison the Artist was awarded a scholarship at the prestigious SAE (Sound & Audio Engineering) Creative Institute, Byron Bay. Harrison the Artist was interviewed and selected to study at the iconic Byron Bay studios with world class facilities earlier this year.
“Since I was a kid, I always wanted to produce a record. Dad had an old four-track DAT recorder. I used to load the mini tapes into the machine and lay the tracks over one another. Losing quality with every new track, though finally I would have a little song i could be proud of. Music has always been a vehicle for which I can channel and express emotions not always fully understood at the time of creating the music itself… it has always been my hope that people are affected by my music and that it can help others feel a little more connected, and less alone in this crazy world”
~ Harrison