Peter Michael Hamel (born in Munich, 15 July, 1947) ranks as one of the best known and most successful German composers of his generation. He studied musical composition, psychology and sociology in Munich and Berlin with teachers as Bialas, Büchtger, Dahlhaus and Georgiades, attended workshops with Karlheinz Stockhausen and continued his education abroad, spending several extensive periods in Asia. Hamel has entered into an intensive engagement with musical cultures from outside Europe, especially the classical music of India. He has drawn inspiration from Asian philosophies and from encounter with the works of Jean Gebser and C.G.Jung to present music that seeks to make itself accessible to the listener through meditative experience and self-exploration. Also he worked and studied with great American composers as John Cage, Morton Feldman and Terry Riley.

In 1970, he founded BETWEEN, an international group of improvisational music with whom he made several records, released by WERGO/INTUITION, and in 1978 he initiated the Freies Musikzentrum in Munich, an institute for musical education and therapy. In 1976, his book “Through Music to the Self” was published, obtaining wide circulation in Europe and the U.S.

Since 1997 he is the successor of György Ligeti as professor for composition at the music academy of Hamburg. His orchestra and chamber music has been published by Schott, Bärenreiter and E.R.P./Celestial Harmonies. He composed four operas, many pieces for orchestra as "Gestalt", violin and piano concertos, spiritual compositions as "Missa" for soprano, choirs and orchestra, "Shoah" (radio-composition about the Holocaust), a lot of chamber music like four string quartets and he is constantly working as a self performing artist (piano, prepared piano, pipe organ, voice and live-electronics). His first symphony has been premiered by Sergiu Celibidache in 1988; his second symphony had its premiere in April 2008 with the Munich Philharmonic. In 2007 Hamel's "Of the Sound of Life" for the pianist Roger Woodward was published.

Further information: www.harmonies.com