Floteson

Floteson is the kamaʻāina composer and guitarist, Dean Harada.

Dean was born and raised in Kāneʻohe, Hawaiʻi. One of his grandfathers was a plantation carpenter, the other a business owner. His dad was a jazz trumpet player, and Dean’s life's been a synthesis of their collective ʻike and naʻauao.

Dean trained at the New England Conservatory in Boston, MA, where he studied theory and improvisation with MacArthur Fellow Ran Blake and classical guitar methodology and performance with virtuoso guitarist and composer, David Leisner. 

His training continued on diverse stages, from Alice Tully Hall to CBGBs, on shared bills with artists ranging from Luciana Souza to Run DMC.

Collaboration with Grammy winner Osvaldo Golijov on the premiere of Golijov's modern orchestral cantata Oceana (commissioned for The New World Guitar Trio at the Oregon Bach Festival), set his path towards composition. Co-founding a recording studio in Boston provided the opportunity to create music for picture. Moving to Los Angeles, that studio evolved into a music production company where his romantic minimalism, blending acoustic instruments and abstract sound, served as the underscore for film, television and theater.

Throughout all this he pursued side-hustles connected to his familial roots. In the early days these were in the construction trades (a la Philip Glass and William Ackerman). Later they morphed into Haruki Murakamiʻs model of “artist/restaurateur”, and most recently as an “artist/director of commercial real estate acquisitions”.

Returning to Hawaiʻi in 2021, the throughline of these experiences led to founding Lōʻihi Records, a vinyl label focused on endemic, non-traditional Hawaiian music and voices. Creating work and making space for this community is his great kuleana. His compositional 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.