Peter Adriaansz was born in Seattle in 1966 and studied composition and organ at the conservatories of The Hague and Rotterdam, where his teachers included Louis Andriessen, Brian Ferneyhough and Peter-Jan Wagemans. From 1993 Adriaansz has worked as a free-lance composer receiving numerous commissions and performances from ensembles and musicians such as ARRAY Music (Toronto), the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, California EAR Unit, ensemble Continuum (Toronto), Crash Ensemble (Dublin), eNsemble (St. Petersburg), Ives Ensemble, ensemble KORE (Montreal), Maarten Altena Ensemble, ensemble MusikFabrik, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras, the Nieuw Ensemble, ensemble Omnibus (Tashkent), Orkest de Volharding, the Schonberg Ensemble, Slagwerkgroep Den Haag, ensemble Klang and the Ural Philharmonic (Yekaterinburg) as well as writing for ensembles with more unusual instrumentations for specific projects. His works are performed and broadcast with world-wide and have featured on many stages, from the Holland Festival to Huddersfield and from Tashkent to Toronto. Over the years he has built up special working relationships with the Ives Ensemble, Slagwerkgroep Den Haag, ensemble MAE, Trio Scordatura and individual musicians such as pianist Gerard Bouwhuis, percussionist Arnold Marinissen and electric guitarist Wiek Hijmans: ensembles and musicians dedicated to the exploration of new sounds and forms. Adriaansz’ music is characterized by a formalist stance and a high degree of conceptualism, in which sound, structure and audible mathematics are the main ingredients. In recent years an increasing interest in flexibility, variable forms - and especially - microtonal reflection can also be observed in his work. In numerous reviews his music has alternately – and often for the same piece - been dubbed everything from sadistic, brutal and extremely boring, to poetic, touching, ingenious and impressive. Adriaansz is also artistic director of Slagwerkgroep Den Haag (Percussion Group The Hague). Most of his works are published privately under AsZoh Press. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.