Brian Harnetty

Brian Harnetty is an American interdisciplinary sound artist and composer. He uses sound and listening to foster social change. His work seems to emerge directly from sound archives derived from the very communities connected to them, particularly in Appalachia and the Midwest. 2009's Silent City employs musical instruments, sculpted ambient electronics, field recordings, and spoken oral history and stories. 2015's Rawhead & Bloodybones weaves together rural folk tales and other field recordings inserted into newly composed music and ambient sounds and stories told by children in the 1940s. 2019's Shawnee, Ohio offers a sonic portrait -- past and present, real and imagined -- of a small Appalachian town in the United States from the mid-19th century on. 2022's Words and Silences offers a musical portrait of Kentucky-based Trappist monk, mystic, and author Thomas Merton, combining 1967 tape recordings of his voice from his hermitage to a suite of original chamber music.