Jeffrey Harrington was born in Forest, Mississippi and spent his formative high school years in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he became personally familiar with many great blues and funk artists with his work as a stage hand at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. While he has studied with several important composers at Juilliard and Tulane, including Elliott Carter, James Drew, and Roger Sessions, he attributes his musical education largely to self-study. Jeffrey Harrington's music is characterized by New Orleans-influenced rhythms, intense counterpoint and climaxes. A noted microtonalist and electronic experimentalist, he was also one of the first musicians to adopt the Internet for music distribution and promotion, starting in 1986 with RelayNet emails and BBS downloads. He is also likely the inventor of the free music distribution model, employing pre-web computer systems to distribute his music (both scores and recordings) to musicians and listeners around the world free of charge garnering worldwide performances and attention. He continues to do so to this day at his site: https://parnasse.com/jh/blog. In November 2011, Harrington had 4 world premieres across the globe in 20 days, two in Germany by Duo Ahlert und Schwab and The Twiolins, one in London, by Camilla Hoitenga, and one in Southern California by The Hutchins Consort.