Peter read music at Royal Holloway College and subsequently undertook research at King’s College, London, under Arnold Whittall. He has spoken frequently at conferences and contributed seminal articles on Peter Maxwell Davies to Perspectives on the composer for Ashgate Press and Music Analysis. Between musicological studies he took a PGCE at the London Institute of Education and taught music at Queen Elizabeth’s School, Faversham, also directing musical holiday courses for children in France.
From 1987 he pursued a career in music publishing: as Editorial Manager at Schott & Co., Area Editor (20th-century composers) for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and General Manager at Peters Edition Ltd. He has recently taken up the post of Business Enterprise Manager for Trinity College of Music and Laban Conservatoire of Contemporary Dance.
Working with choral groups (for whom he has also regularly composed and arranged music) is a long-established passion: in 1985 Peter formed the ten-voice group Decantor, performing madrigals, part-songs and lighter items, both in London and abroad; from 1990–93 he was Musical Director of the St Cyprian’s Festival Chorus in concerts ranging from Renaissance and Baroque repertoire to that of the 20th century.
He has participated in conducting courses led by David Lawrence, Rodolfo Saglimbeni and George Hurst at the Canford Summer School of Music, complementing these studies with qualifications in foreign languages and phonetics (in which he is pursuing research at the University of Westminster). He has directed the chamber group Intimate Voices since its début at the Stoke Newington Festival in June 1996 – the group scored a hit with a recent performance of Stockhausen’s Stimmung at The British Library – and became Musical Director of Collegium Musicum of London in 1997.
Rupert Bawden (conductor) Rupert Bawden continues to pursue a varied career both in music and outside of it. A professional violin/violist for fourteen years, he played across the stylistic spectrum from the English Concert and English Chamber Orchestras to the London Sinfonietta and the Michael Nyman Band. Throughout this time he also worked as a composer and conductor with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia, the Nash Ensemble and the BBC Singers, as well as working with orchestras in America, Australia and mainland Europe, notably Germany, where his ballet, Le Livre de Fauvel, was staged by the Bavarian State Ballet and broadcast on radio and television.
Particularly associated with contemporary music, he has called a number of leading figures to the stage, among them Tippett, Birtwistle, Goehr, Holloway, H K Gruber, Kagel, Bennett, Holt and Sawer. Although he gave up professional music in 1994, he remains active as a player and conductor and has plans to compose an opera for performance in 2001. Now working as a paramedic and officer with the London Ambulance Service, he is also a Councillor in the London Borough of Lambeth. This is his fifth concert with Collegium Musicum - together they have explored a wide and intriguing repertoire from Tallis to Maxwell Davies via Brahms and Bartók.
David Lawrence (conductor) David Lawrence is one of Britain's most promising young conductors. He studied choral conducting with Simon Halsey and orchestral conducting with Colin Metters and George Hurst at the Royal Academy of Music, where he won all the major conducting prizes. David is most widely known as a guest conductor of choirs and small opera companies. He is Founder Director of Music at De Montfort University, Leicester and Choir Leader of the new City of Birmingham Young Voices.
David has maintained a special interest in the work of 20th century British composers. He was invited back to the Royal Academy of Music to conduct the première of Andrew Grant's opera The Basement Room, and with the British Chamber Choir made the first commercial recording of the music of Christopher Brown.
David has toured widely within Europe, represented Britain at an international Festival of Music and Dance at Bangalore, India, and for three years travelled to Colombia as a guest conductor. Opera productions have included Le Nozze di Figaro with Martlet Opera and La Cenerentola for Heart of England Opera.
Recently David replaced Nicholas Kok at the last minute in a concert with the East of England Orchestra and continues to work with them and their education department. He also directed a performance with the contemporary music group The Helix Ensemble and was immediately invited back.
David is a popular workshop leader with many of Britain's leading choral organisations such as the British Federation of Young Choirs and Association of British Choral Directors, and as a conducting teacher directs courses for the Voices Foundation, and Canford Summer School of Music amongst others. He was an adjudicator for the Sainsbury's Choir of the Year Competition 2000.
Recent performances have included the Young World Concerts, which involved choirs of over 8,500 voices, a recording for BBC TV with 800 children, broadcast on Boxing Day last year, and the final performance of an 18 month long education project with The Hanover Band.
Current engagements include the première of a new choral work by Graham Fitkin, performances at Birmingham's Symphony Hall, work with the Netherlands Radio Choir, further concerts with the East of England orchestra, Millennium Concerts with a variety of choirs and choruses and a recording with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. website...
Howard Williams (conductor)
Howard has gained an enviable reputation through his achievements both in the opera house and on the concert platform. He has conducted most of the major orchestras of Great Britain, including the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic and BBC Symphony, as well as all the BBC regional orchestras, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National, Bournemouth Symphony and Sinfonietta, English Chamber Orchestra and London Sinfonietta. He has conducted at the BBC Proms and at the Edinburgh, Leeds, Bath and Brighton Festivals..
He is a frequent guest with many European orchestras, including the Austrian Radio Orchestra, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Belgian Radio Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras, Slovak Philharmonic, Orchestre Nationale de Lyon and Orchestre de Strasbourg. Other guest appearances have taken him both to South America and to the Far East.
The foundations of Howard's large operatic repertoire were laid during six years on the staff of English National Opera, and from that time it has continued to broaden, now including some sixty works ranging from Monteverdi to Birtwistle. Central to his repertoire are the works of Rossini, Verdi and Puccini, but he is equally to be seen with baroque orchestras and contemporary ensembles. Amongst his several operatic world premieres have been his own completion of Bizet's grand opera Ivan IV and the small-orchestra version of Tippett's The Knot Garden. With the English Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra he has conducted productions at Covent Garden of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, Purcell's Fairy Queen and Dido and Aeneas and Handel's Oreste. His work in the theatre has also extended to the major ballets of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, as well as other programmes with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, with the Dutch National Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theatre and Hamburg Ballet.
Howard Williams devotes a significant amount of time to appearances with the leading symphony orchestras in Hungary, including the National Philharmonic, Hungarian Radio Orchestra, Hungarian Symphony Orchestra and Budapest Concert Orchestra. His close connection with that country dates from 1989, when he was invited to become Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Pécs Symphony Orchestra, becoming the first British conductor ever to hold a Hungarian post. His work with the Pécs Symphony quickly placed it in the forefront of Hungarian orchestras, and he created with them a broad and adventurous repertoire, ranging from Stravinsky and Mahler cycles to many important premieres. For his services to new Hungarian music, Howard has been the recipient of an Artisjus award, and in 1997 was honoured with the Bartók medal for services to Hungarian music abroad.
From September 2000 Howard Williams takes up the post of Head of Conducting at the Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, as well as that of Principal Guest Conductor of the Oxford Orchestra da Camera. His other plans for 2001 include debuts with the Hungarian State Opera and Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, Lisbon. Howard last directed Collegium Musicum in a concert of music by Bach, Mendelssohn and Haydn in May 1997.
