Kansas City based composer AJ Harbison is one of the recipients of an Inspiration Grant supported by ArtsKC. He will compose a new piece for students of Harmony Project KC to rehearse and premiere alongside members of the KC Symphony. The new piece will be premiered on December 12, 2015 at the Northeast Community Center in Kansas City. The grant will fund his commissioning fee and teaching honorarium to work with the students.
Harmony Project KC is an intensive, after-school music education program for children living in Kansas City. The program is free and tailored to deserving students. The commissioned work will be performed by the students with teachers and members of the KC Symphony participating. Harmony Project is also providing the venue and covering all venue-related expenses. Through the project, the students will interact with a living, local composer. The concert will be on December 12, 2015.
AJ Harbison (born 1985) is a composer and singer/songwriter living with his lovely wife and young daughter in Kansas City, Missouri. His music lives at the intersection of concert music and vernacular music, each bringing unique vitality to the other in a language both adventurous and accessible. Often integrating harmonies and rhythms from pop music with theory, instrumentation and forms from concert music, his work searches for beauty in brokenness in the space between the already and the not yet. He seeks to create music that is good (enriching the performer and the listener), true (portraying the world as it really is), and beautiful (displaying a mastery of the craft of composition).
FuseBox New Music champions composers by providing them with performances, commissions, recordings, and professional advancement opportunities, with a special emphasis on emerging local composers. They have connected Harmony Project KC with the composer and will donate their time to assisting in activities the day of the concert.

The Harmony Project Commission