In Harmen's life, God, the Bible and faith are important elements. A lot of his compositions are based on faith and texts from the Bible. It's his goal to touch people (both believers and non-believers), through his music, and give them a deeper connection with themselves and the people around them. To achieve this, he makes all of his compositional choices in a way that they serve what he wants to express.
Biography
Harmen was born in Alphen aan den Rijn, where he still lives. At seven years, his piano lessons with Simon Stelling. After some time, composing started to become a part of the piano lessons, which greatly appealed to him. This got stronger when he took music lessons with Cornelis van Dis in secondary school (VWO) at the Driestar College in Gouda. The lessons made him love music even more, with as a highlight the compositions he wrote for this.
After secondary school, he studied Industrial Design Engineering at the TU Delft for a year and did the pre-bachelor Classical Music at the Utrechts Conservatory, with composition as main subject, which he continued the following year in the Bachelor Classical Music. He's now in the third year of his studies of composition with Caroline Ansink and Anne-Maartje Lemereis.
