Listeners enamoured of the work of Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds, and Max Richter should find much to like about the Mirla project.

— Ron Schepper - Textura

Solitaire is a glorious, life affirming album. It is about much more than patience; it’s about incorporation, inspiration and imagination. Drawing sustenance from the past, she uncovers lessons for the present, celebrating female resilience and power.

— Richard Allen - A Closer Listen

Emily Mirla Harrison is an Australian pianist, screen composer, and post-classical recording artist performing and releasing music as Mirla. 

Mirla’s spell-binding solo piano performances are mesmeric and immersive, passing through lyrical and poignant pieces into triumphant and defiant movements. 

One of Australia’s best emerging post-classical (neoclassical) talents, Mirla’s debut album Solitaire: The Virtue of Patience (2021) featured on ABC’s Classic Drive. 

Solitaire concept

A stunning meditation on love, hope, and resilience, the concept won the Johnny Dennis Music Award (Australian Guild of Screen Composers).

Set in Perth, 1942, a young woman waits for news of her sweetheart sailor; his ship HMAS Perth is destroyed. During the long nights of waiting between the card games of patience, she writes letters to her sailor, only to have them all returned – unread. In her 'house of cards' she struggles between feelings of hope and fear as the news arrives her sailor has been captured by the Japanese; he languishes in the prison camps of the Burma-Thailand Railway. 

Based on Mirla’s family arrives of letters and diaries, the album’s introverted laments of longing evolve into epic multi-instrumental movements – storms born of separation and captivity, the music broils and swells like those blood-stained waters of the pacific theatre of war. 

Critics drew a line from the ground-breaking Blue Notebooks by Max Richter, through to the works of Nils Frahm, Hania Rani, Ólafur Arnalds, and Joep Beving. Harrison has said her influences go back to her passion for the Romantic masters: Chopin, Rachmaninov, and Debussy, and hearing her father strum 70’s folk standards. 

 

Collaboration with the Hush Foundation

Combining a composing career with a nursing career in Emergency Departments, Oncology, and remote Aboriginal Health Centres, Harrison is passionate about the potential of music to transform health environments and improve health outcomes. 

Harrison is a collaborating artist with the Hush Foundation . For over 20 years, the Hush Foundation has been working with renowned Australian artists to create music that brings calm and optimism to patients, their families, and staff in stressful hospital and healthcare environments.

Mirla's latest release Nightflowers (2024) is the lead single for Hush's next album release Seeking Solace. Inspired by the stories of women working through their mental health issues, Nightflowers expresses how the beautiful can bloom, even in the darkest hours.

Performances

Solitaire was first performed on World Piano Day 2021 at Newcastle’s Momo Piano Sessions - a live performance event founded and hosted by Harrison and her husband to showcase neoclassical artists, including the twice ARIA-nominated Nat Bartsch.  The aim of the event is to make classical-influenced music inclusive, attract more diverse audiences, and provide a platform for musicians to experiment.

Mirla has since performed at Brunswick live classical venue Tempo Rubato and Sydney’s Church Street Studios.

Music Releases

Harrison has collaborated with Canadian boutique label Enjou (formerly Little Symphony Records LSR) – a community of genre-defying musicians creating neoclassical and ambient music — to release five singles: 

  • Ukiyo (A Floating World) (2024)

  • Fallow (2022)

  • Crepuscule ((2022)

  • Patience and In Search of Lost Time featured on the LSR compilation Neo-Classical Essentials Vol. 1 & 2

Screen Composing

Harrison is a graduate of the renowned Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS).

Harrison’s 14 screen credits, including Co-composer and Music Supervisor on Undone, a feature documentary about big wave surfer Laura Enever, and a composer credit on award-winning children’s animation Bluey. 

Her signature piano-driven scores blend fragile string arrangements with subtle ambient soundscapes and deft instrumentation to support the screen narrative. 

Listen to screen works here.