THE WORKBENCH (2023-24)
“Dignified, meticulous, profoundly moving sound art. Four stars.”
“I am so moved by this music and these visuals… A masterclass.”
“Paul spent his life fixing typewriters and extending the lives of other objects. In similar fashion, Brian now extends his father’s memory, enhancing it with a heartfelt tribute that will introduce him – via the objects he loved – to people who never had the chance to know him. The physical workbench has now become aural; we suspect his father would be proud.”
“It’s easily [Harnetty’s] most intimate composition, drawing back the veil in ways that can be gutting.”
“It’s a single movement to honor a relationship while reflecting on the brevity of time and the artifacts that persist amid mortality… It’s a short statement from Harnetty but one that lasts.”
“Harnetty creates space for a piece that is at once melancholy, uplifting, winsome, and profound... Carve out some time to let this one work its wonders on you and you may find it about you and yours as well—an ode to all we share and can, together, repair.”
“Bittersweet...Elegiac...Harnetty doesn’t build the music around the cadences of his father’s voice, nor does he cut the phone messages into verse format. Rather, the everyday updates serve as simple interjections that drive the piece.”
Matter News: “Brian Harnetty keeps the gift in motion with ‘The Workbench’”
In the weeks and months after his father died in October 2021, Brian Harnetty would visit his mother in the home his parents once shared. Once there, he would inevitably spend time seated at his dad’s workbench – a space that continued to reverberate with the elder’s presence even after his death.
“When I was a little kid, it was my favorite place to go. It’s shabby and orderly at the same time, and it worked just for him, where everything was right at arm’s reach,” said Harnetty of the workbench where his dad would sit for hours on end, repairing manual typewriters, radios and other electronics. “There’s nothing special about it. I mean, the workbench isn’t expensive, and the objects on it aren’t extremely valuable money-wise. But when you look at it top-down, there are so many paint marks and splatter marks and places where he’s drawn on it. You could see parts of his mind ingrained in the wood ... and tease out parts of his personality.”
In the hours Brian Harnetty spent seated at this workbench, which he described as intrinsic to the grieving process, he began to weigh concepts that included the passage of time, the inevitably of death, and the power of inherited objects, which can carry trace elements of the past capable of spinning one backwards in time. Harnetty, for one, recalled the sense of wonder and play he once felt while sitting at the workbench as a child, and how aspects of that returned when he again spent time with it as an adult. — Andy Downing, November 2023
A Closer Listen: “The physical workbench has now become aural”
How much of a person’s essence is imbued in the objects they collect? The more personal the object, the greater the usage, the more likely it retains a particle of the owner. When Brian Harnetty inherited his father’s workbench, typewriter, and an array of radios and miscellaneous hardware, he began to ask such questions. Could these objects speak of his father Paul, not only in associations, but in actual sound?
The Workbench is a single, 11-minute composition, offered in both primary and instrumental versions. While they seem similar, they bear unequal amounts of weight, which seems to prove Harnetty’s thesis. The instrumental version begins with wistful violin, which establishes a mood of mourning even before the piano enters. This is a tender composition; one need not know the subject in order to intuit its inspiration. Once the cello enters, the mood turns even more solemn, and for a time, the piano notes grow sparse, as if witnessing to the gap left by the loss of a life. In the third minute, the bass clarinet arrives to flesh things out, like memories rushing in, the treasury of experiences balancing the sorrow of loss. The center is akin to a folk dance. When the central melody returns, it is swifter and brighter…
Aquarium Drunkard: “Carve out some time to let this one work its wonders on you”
When we last checked in with Brian Harnetty, the Ohio composer had crafted Words and Silences, a spiritually sustaining collection of music paired with audio diary entries from theologian and mystic Thomas Merton. Like a conversation occurring between disparate individuals across great expanses of space and time, it was one of our favorite albums of 2022. Now, Harnetty has returned with an even more personal work: The Workbench, an EP which layers voicemails from his late father Paul and the sounds of items the elder Harnetty had repaired—watches, radios, clocks, music boxes—over patiently unfolding piano and orchestration from assembled collaborators, dubbed the “Unheard-Of Ensemble.”
Inspired by profound questions—”are there sonic traces of a person embedded in these collected, repaired, and loved objects? And do the objects have their own agency, which we can activate and listen to?“—Harnetty creates space for a piece that is at once melancholy, uplifting, winsome, and profound. And while the assorted ticks and clicks of his father’s belongings accompany this generous music, the most affecting sample closes the piece: Paul’s soft pulses of breath, recorded shortly before his passing…
Dusted Magazine: “It’s a short statement from Harnetty but one that lasts”
Composer Brian Harnetty has created memorable work by digging into cultural archives. Shawnee, Ohio (2019) uncovered layers of memory from Appalachia, while last year’s Words and Silences drew on recordings of Thomas Merton for sustained contemplation. For his brief EP The Workbench, he takes a different approach, mining deeply personal moments for an individual revelation. He begins with items that his father had repaired — a watch, a radio — and adds in voicemail messages, all in conversation with an evocative quartet. Eventually he ends the piece with his father’s breathing as he sleeps in hospice, a quiet outro that finds mournful but understated peace.
The 11-minute track moves so smoothly that singling out key moments almost misses the point; it’s a single movement to honor a relationship while reflecting on the brevity of time and the artifacts that persist amid mortality…
Foxy Digitalis Magazine: “I am so moved by this music and these visuals… A masterclass.”
Immediately, the clockwork mechanics grab our attention as Brian Harnetty’s “The Workbench” finds its feet within an emotive framework. An aural representation of his father, Paul, that stings with sweetness, an embrace outlined by recorded memories and glowing sonic imagery. Chord progressions move languidly, an eternal sigh through piano strings buoyed by cello and bass clarinet silhouettes. Voicemail recordings from Harnetty’s father morph from something banal into something golden through the weight of this music. They are so precise and personal yet most of us know these messages well. Harnetty weaves them into these beautiful arrangements that are fleeting.
The video has a magic of its own as it flips through the artifacts of Paul Harnetty’s life while adding a tactile element to the music. Carried by the wistful chord progressions and emotive accouterments, each object is a tiny puzzle piece attempting to fill in the impossible details that make a person whole. I am so moved by this music and these visuals, letting it carry me away it becomes impossible not to think about my own future self when I have to sort through my own parents’ lives. I hope I can do it with the grace and melancholic beauty of Brian Harnetty’s “The Workbench.” A masterclass.
The Red Hook Star Review:
…Completing this accidental trilogy of downtempo downers is a bittersweet single by the Columbus, Ohio–based composer Brian Harnetty. “The Workbench” (download out now on Winesap Records) is a somber, 11-minute meditation on loss, using telephone messages from his father. Harnetty doesn’t build the music around the cadences of his father’s voice, nor does he cut the phone messages into verse format. Rather, the everyday updates serve as simple interjections that drive the piece. The elegiac music is scored for piano, violin, cello and bass clarinet, and based on Harnetty imagining sonic memories embedded in the objects her inherited: tools, radios, speakers, a typewriter and the titular workbench. The digital flipside is an instrumental version, perhaps intended for more personal rumination.