Peter Hobbs (composer)


Peter Hobbs BMus is an award-winning New Zealand screen composer. He has scored soundtracks for films, television, commercials, art installations, and contemporary dance works. He also fronts the Alternative Country band Lost Demos. Hobbs describes himself as a "diehard advocate for the spaces between the notes"

Professional life

Peter Hobbs has been awarded internationally as a film composer, and sound designer. He currently operates Harmonic Studio, a music and sound studio in Auckland, New Zealand.

Composing work

Hobbs has composed soundtracks for a number of New Zealand films, including Jean, for which he won a Gold for Best Original Music at New York Festivals Awards and Best Original Score at the 2017 NZ Television Awards. He scored James Napier Robertson's 2009 feature film, I'm Not Harry Jenson and has written music for a number of long-running television series, most notably the hit Australian show Highway Patrol, now in its eighth season. Hobbs is a frequent collaborator on artistic projects, creating soundscapes for virtual reality and other visual mediums, such as with photographer Chris Sisarich, and visual effects artist Jon Baxter, with whom he created an immersive video experience for New Zealand's pavilion at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2012.
He regularly works with the leading Māori dance company Atamira for which his soundtracks have been described as "quietly rhythmic, smoky" and "dramatic". In 2016 he collaborated with famed NZ musician Shayne Carter and master Taonga pūoro player James Webster on the soundtrack for Pango, a new contemporary dance piece for Atamira that toured China. The team of Hobbs, Carter, Webster and Artistic Director Moss Patterson was described as "the marriage of...four stunning talents". Hobbs has mentioned his admiration of film composer Cliff Martinez.

Film soundtrack credits