Peter Yates is a guitarist, composer, educator and multi-media artist.

His work as a guitarist and chamber musician includes sixteen European tours with the Elgart/Yates Guitar Duo and continues with the voice/guitar duo GuitAria and the trio ensembleFRET. These groups have emphasized new and original composition, and have premiered over a hundred works, including many of his own. He also directs the UCLA and Cal Poly Pomona Guitar Ensembles in six concerts each season.

Performances have been hosted by the Gaudeamus Festival in Amsterdam, the American Academy in Rome, the Hindemith Institute in Switzerland, the Paris Swiss Helvetica Center, the Holywell Room in Oxford, Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the El Camino Guitar Festival, the Dominguez Hills Guitar Festival, La Guitarra California, the Los Angeles Guitar Festival, San Miguel de Allende Guitar Festival, Composers INC, NACUSA, Meet the Composer, The Festival of American Music, the Ussachevsky Festival, the Unsung Summer Series, the Efflorescence Series, the CSU Summer Arts Festival, microfest, the New York Guitar Festival, and the UCLA Chancellor’s Residence Series.

He has collaborated with composers and performers such as Marco Cappelli, Tom Flaherty, Cynthia Fogg, Matthew Elgart, Alan Berman, Neal Stulberg, Movses Pogossian, Garry Eister, David Starobin, Jonathon Grasse, Juliana Gondek, David Tannenbaum, Eric Pham, Marc Kaplan, Nadia Shpachenko, Alexandra Grabarchuk, the London Royal Ballet and national accordion champion Jenny Amaya.

He has given concerts on the arpeggione, a bowed guitar, throughout the state, at the Los Angeles Guitar Festival and the UCLA Powell Library Rotunda Series. As an arpeggionist, he is featured in the recent British documentary film Did You Say Bowed Guitar?

Yates’ compositions include a growing repertoire of music for voice and guitar (with and without additional instruments), and multimedia for which he shoots, directs and produces music videos (youtube/peteryates). Radio Rodia, his chamber opera about the Watts Towers has been performed at the Living Arts Festival in Tulsa, at North Texas State University, the NOW Festival, Manual Arts Theater, the Downtown Center in Pomona, Pomona College and at UCLA. His DVD ghost-town opera The Mother Lode, in which period photographs of hardrock mining come to life and sing, has been screened at the Echo Park Film Center, UCLA, music festivals and all over the world. His film Duplicate the Error features his original scorefor prepared guitar, something he pioneered and co-wrote a book about (Prepared Guitar Techniques).

He has been interviewed on Italian State Radio (RAI), Mexican State Radio and regularly on KPFK, and has been invited to lecture to the National Association of Composers and Arrangers, as well as to present at the Composers Salon. He is a rare freethinker to have been celebrated as a local hero by the International Festival of Sacred Music, and received a Distinguished Teaching Award from Cal Poly Pomona.