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

Mirla’s spell-binding solo piano performances take the audience on an immersive journey through delicate, poignant pieces into movements which are by turns triumphant and defiant.

Acknowledged as one of Australia’s best emerging neoclassical talents, Mirla’s debut album Solitaire: The Virtue of Patience (2021) featured on ABC’s Classic Drive to popular acclaim. Based on the war diaries of her grandmother 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.

Solitaire is a stunning meditation on love, hope, and resilience. Set in Perth 1942, a young woman waits for news of her sweetheart sailor: his ship the HMAS Perth is destroyed; captured by the Japanese he languishes in the prison camps of the Burma-Thailand Railway. Between games of patience, she writes letters, only to have them returned – unread. In her house of cards, she waits in hope and fear.

The concept won the Johnny Dennis Music Award (Australian Guild of Screen Composers). 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 further, to her passion for the Romantic masters: Chopin, Rachmaninov, Debussy, and hearing her father strum 70’s folk standards.

Solitaire was first performed on International Piano Day at Newcastle’s Momo Piano Sessions, as a semi-regular live performance event founded by Harrison to showcase neoclassical artists, including the twice ARIA-nominated Nat Bartsch.

Harrison collaborates with boutique label Little Symphony Records – a community of genre-defying musicians creating neoclassical and ambient music; releasing the singles: Fallow and Crepuscule, with Patience and In Search of Lost Time featured on the LSR compilation Neo-Classical Essentials Vol. 1 & 2.

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. Collaborating with the Hush Foundation on its next release Seeking Solace, Harrison’s latest original composition is inspired by the stories of women working through their mental health issues.

A graduate of Australian Film Television and Radio School, Harrison has 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.