Lou Harrison passed away?

I just heard on MPR a few minutes ago that Lou Harison passed away suddenly today while traveling. I tried looking for some mention of this on various online news outlets, but no luck.

Just thought I'd pass this along.

This is very, very sad news. I had just attended the concluding concert at Juilliard on Friday night of a week-long festival celebrating music west of the Rockies in honor of Lou Harrison's 85th birthday. On the concluding concert Reinbert de Leeuw conducted the student orchestra in Harrison's Parade and his Elegiac Symphony, Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, and pieces by Chinary Ung and John Adams. Few pieces of music from the last fifty or sixty years are so noble and so sweet as Harrison's Elegiac Symphony. He was an authentic American original and will be deeply missed. It makes one hope that his music, which has potentially very wide appeal, will become much better known. It recently well known enough that Harrison could no longer attend more than a small percentage of performances of his own work, but it deserves exposure worldwide on a par with Charles Ives or Aaron Copland. Lou was truly a world-class compositional voice as unmistably unique as Panufnik or Holmboe, other true individualists of our era.

No, it doesn't.

Two only slightly-more-memorable composers.

Harrison may have been an American original, but if he was he was it only in the sense that Alan Hovhaness was. Original, but not outstanding.

He was not 'hugely influential' in Europe; he is barely known here (which, of course, says little in and of itself).

I got a number of pieces, including the 2nd (Elegiac) and 3rd Symphonies, the Seven Pastorales, the Suite for Symphonic Strings and the Grand-Duo for Violin and Piano, which I also heard live.

Dennis Russell Davies, my hometown orchestra's former principal conductor, made an effort to popularize Harrison's music here, and he performed in the Grand-Duo (and on the recording too).

Harrison's music, while certainly accessible, didn't impress me much.

Just as relevant or irrelevant as comments to the contrary.

No, that's where Colin McPhee's importance lies.

Strangely, Harrison's 2nd and 3rd symphonies are considered by some among his most 'important' pieces.

Such as yourself ...

It's not a 'RIP thread' (strange concept to begin with, isn't it?), it's an 'is he dead?' thread.

Yes it does. McPhee was the pioneer, Harrison a follower.

Since RIP threads always tend to lead to overblown appreciation of a composer's importance (such as your post indicated), a little perspective seems in order.

Harrison was not a terribly important composer.

And it's very stupid debating tactics to suggest the other person just doesn't know 'the truly genuine' works.