Harrison was recommended several times to study musical composition in Paris – or Europe more broadly – but resolved several times against it, due to his staunch position of promoting and elevating the status of his fellow American composers. In 1943, Harrison moved to New York City and worked as a music critic for the Herald Tribune at the behest of fellow composer and tutor Virgil Thomson. While there, he met and befriended many modernist composers of the East Coast, including Carl Ruggles, Alan Hovhaness, and most consequentially, Charles Ives. Harrison would later dedicate himself to bringing Ives to the attention of the musical world – whose works had largely been scoffed at or ignored up to that point. With the assistance of his mentor Cowell, he engraved and conducted the premiere of Ives's Symphony No. 3 (1910); receiving financial help from Ives in return. When Ives won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for that piece, he gave half of the money rewarded to Harrison. Harrison also edited a large number of Ives's works, receiving compensation often in excess of what he billed.
