Harrison Gradwell Slater. Public figure and bestselling
novelist. Harrison Slater (author of "The Embrace: Part One") combines the versatile careers of musicologist,
pianist and writer, as well as conductor, record producer, music publisher and photographer. Of his three books
on Mozart, the last is the mystery novel, Night Music (the product of seven years of research and writing), which
opens the world of Mozart’s life and music to a worldwide audience. The sequel, Nocturne (2010), which explores
Chopin’s biography and music within a contemporary narrative of suspense and obsession, is available on Kindle.
Part III of the trilogy is The Embrace, which includes the music of Tchaikovsky in a work that explores the conflict of
good and evil. Opening chapters of The Embrace can be found on this website.
For his first book, Slater (the author’s pen name since 1995) traveled to fifty-five
cities in nine European countries and completed his exhaustive research over three years with correspondence to archives throughout
Europe, always posing previously unresolved questions about Mozart Gedenkstaetten -- the sumptuous palaces, concert
halls and salons in which Mozart performed, the houses and taverns in which he lodged, and the churches and public edifices
that he visited. The resulting comprehensive reference book, In Mozart’s Footsteps, has been called “an
amazing feat of scholarship” by the pianist, Alfred Brendel, while Nicholas Slonimsky described it as “absorbing
in its brilliance.”
Night Music
was voted "Rising Star of 2003" by nine publishing houses, was on the Barnes and Noble bestseller list for mystery
trade paperback for fourteen weeks, and was optioned for a film. Reviews can be found on www.harrisonslater.com
Scholarly articles by Slater (a.k.a. Harrison James Wignall) have appeared in the journals Mozart-Jahrbuch, Opera
Quarterly and Mozart Studien, among others. Some of his recent discoveries include previously unknown Mozart
documents and manuscripts that have shed light on key issues of recent Mozart research. He has also written entries
for The New Grove and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera,
and has published articles in Perspectives of New Music, Indiana Theory Review and the Nuova rivista
musicale italiana.
A pianist, he studied with Anthony di Bonaventura and with Paul Doguereau, the noted French pianist who was a pupil of Maurice
Ravel, Emma Bardac (the second wife of Claude Debussy) and Ignaz Paderewski. In addition to writing and recording, Slater
coaches many world-class pianists, and is President and Artistic Director of the Peabody Mason International Piano Competition
(www.peabodymasonpianocompetition.com).
Slater studied music and languages at Brandeis, Boston University, Ludwig-Maximilians University
in Munich and Harvard, and speaks, in addition to English, German, French and Italian. He was active as a music instructor
in Boston, Munich, Milan, and Tokyo and worked at the Munich National Theater and La Scala in Milan as a ballet pianist, performing
numerous concerts.
In 1995, he received
his Ph. D. in musicology from Brandeis University with a dissertation on Mozart’s opera, Mitridate.
For over thirty years, he lived abroad, in Munich, Tokyo, and primarily Milan.
Slater has finished recordings featuring the music of Mozart and Chopin, and has completed
the sequel to Night Music, entitled Nocturne (based on rediscovered diaries related to Chopin). His
newest recordings, conducting the Piano Concerto No. 2 of Chopin and the Piano Concerto No. 1 of Tchaikovsky (performed
by Tsotne Tsotskhalashvili and Richard Bosworth) will be released in 2012.
Harrison
Slater's research and writing of the monograph, Mozart in Milan continues and includes, "Mozart and Sacred
Music in the Ambrosian Capital" and "Mozart's Singers in Ascanio in Alba and Lucio Silla,"
articles which incorporate two handwritten diaries from 1771 found by Slater in archives in Milan.
Slater’s most recent musicological
publication, “Chopin and the Vocal Nocturne,” continues his seminal research on the influence of the vocal nocturne
on the piano music of Chopin, first published in his Ph.D. dissertation, his Mozart-Jahrbuch article, "Mozart and
the 'Duetto Notturno' Tradition" (1993) and in his entry, "Duetto notturno," in The New Grove (2000).
