Floteson
Floteson is the kamaʻāina composer and guitarist, Dean Harada.
Trained at the New England Conservatory in Boston, MA, Dean studied theory and improvisation with MacArthur Fellow Ran Blake and guitar methodology and performance with virtuoso guitarist and composer, David Leisner. As a performer he played diverse stages, from Lincoln Center to CBGBs, and shared the bills with artists ranging from Duo Assad to Run DMC.
Collaboration with Grammy winners Oswaldo Golijov and Luciana Souza on the world premiere of his modern orchestral cantata Oceana (commissioned for The New World Guitar Trio at the Oregon Bach Festival), set Dean’s path towards composition. After moving to Los Angeles, his romantic minimalism blending acoustic instruments and abstract sound served as the underscore for film, television and theater.
Now with his studio practice back in Hawaii, Dean’s work as Floteson continues an interest in exploring conversive, narrative, and figurative processes. His practice, combined with aloha ʻāina, seeks to reconcile the contradictory things he loves: collaboration and solitude, narrative structure and nonlinear thinking, technology and the human touch.
