Pete Harden
Pete Harden (UK, 1979) is a composer and performer based in the Netherlands. Moving there in 2000 to pursue composition studies at the Royal Conservatoire, in The Hague, he studied with Louis Andriessen, Gilius van Bergeijk and Richard Ayres. In 2000 he won the Pro-Arte Guitar Trio Composition Competition, was a winner at the 2004 Apeldoorn Young Composers Meeting, and has had work featured in the Gaudeamus Music Week. In October 2011 his work ʻforming a petal from a piece of metalʼ was performed in New York during the SONiC Festival, a celebration of some of the most interesting music written by composers under the age of 40.
He has worked on a number of large-scale music-theatre pieces, including Carnation (2005), a work for large ensemble and four cars. Recent works have pursued an interest in information aesthetics, exploring the beauty of data and its representation. Following a period of research in 2011 most pieces have embraced Just Intonation tuning, including Beating Patterns I and Beating Patterns II.
He has had works commissioned and performed by, among others, the Dutch Radio Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, Orkest de Ereprijs, Slagwerk Groep Den Haag, Ensemble Soil, Marco Blaauw, Dirk Luijmes, Anja Kwekkestein, Trio Scordatura, the Orgelpark (Amsterdam) and Marcel Worms.
He is a founding member of Ensemble Klang, for whom he both plays guitar and organizes the artistic direction of the group. With the ensemble he has performed across the Netherlands, and in France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and the United States.