Peter Bannister
*11 July 1966
Works by Peter Bannister
Biography
Born in 1966, Peter Bannister studied at King's College Cambridge and in Paris with Naji Hakim (composition), Geneviève Ibanez and Michel Beroff (piano). His awards include the Prix André Caplet for musical composition from the Institut de France as well as prizes at international competitions in San Sebastian (composition), Chartres and Nuremberg (organ). From 2006 to 2013 he was associate artistic director to John Nelson and composer-in-association with SOLI DEO GLORIA Inc. (Chicago). He has written over 50 orchestral, choral, vocal and instrumental works, performed in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Notre-Dame de Paris, Vale of Glamorgan and Cheltenham Festivals, London Southbank Centre, Saarländischer Rundfunk, Klangbogen Wien, Settembre Musicale di Trieste, Ensemblia Mönchengladbach, Chartres, Frankfurt and Salzburg Cathedrals. Commissioners have included the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Rencontres Musicales de la Prée, Polish Ministry of Culture, Niederrheinische Sinfoniker... Resident in France since 1994, he currently lives in Cluny in Burgundy.
Full biography
Born in London but living in France since 1994, Peter Bannister received his initial training and introduction to professional music as a member of Trinity Boys' Choir in London in a variety of settings from opera productions to recording sessions for Monty Python. His teachers included David de Warrenne (piano), Helen Roy (voice) and John Shepherd (organ). Following his musical studies at King's College Cambridge, where he was a liturgical organist under the direction of Stephen Cleobury, he studied in Paris as a French government scholarship holder with Geneviève Ibanez, Michel Beroff (piano) and the composer/organist Naji Hakim. He was awarded prizes at the international competitions of Chartres, Nuremberg (organ) and San Sebastian (composition) as well as the André Caplet composition prize of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. He worked for several years in the field of opera as a pianist/vocal coach/assistant conductor (Opéra National de Paris, Théâtre du Châtelet, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence), working with conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, James Conlon and Jukka-Pekka Saraste.
His catalogue comprises over fifty orchestral, choral, vocal and instrumental works, influenced by a wide range of sources from Hildegarde von Bingen or Baroque counterpoint to Olivier Messiaen, Polish aleatorism, neo-minimalism or acoustic/electric jazz. Commissions and creations in Europe and the United States have led to collaborations with Musique Sacrée de Notre-Dame de Paris, Rencontres Musicales de La Prée, Saarländischer Rundfunk, the Polish Ministry of Culture, Vale of Glamorgan/Cheltenham Festivals, Niederrheinische Sinfoniker, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Trinity College Choir, Cambridge, Cor Cantiamo, Illinois (CD Psallite Deo, 2016), Bourges and Chartres Cathedrals...) A meeting in 2000 with the American conductor John Nelson had a decisive impact on his development, leading to the composition of the works Nuages de Magellan and Pursued by Bronze Horsemen for the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2004 and 2006 respectively. From 2009 to 2013 he was Associate Artistic Director to John Nelson and Composer-in-Association for the Chicago-based sacred music organization SOLI DEO GLORIA Inc., for which he wrote a series of works including Hermosura de Dios for voice and orchestra, premiered by Hungarian mezzo-soprano Andrea Melath at the Zemplen Festival in 2010 and an Organ Concerto in memoriam Albert Schweitzer, premiered in Stuttgart Cathedral in 2013. As a conductor of his own work, he directed his oratorio Et iterum venturus est in memory of Olivier Messiaen (2008) in the closing concert of the Messiaen centenary cycle in the composer's church of La Trinité in Paris with the Ensemble Ochestral de Paris, Maîtrise de Paris and the French Army Choir. In 2013 he directed his Breathe in me at the Palais Omnisports Paris-Bercy and in 2016 his electro-acoustic Stabat Mater with the Warsaw-based Ensemble Hashtag at the Poznan International New Music festival in Poland.
More recent projects have included a Miserere for voice and orchestra premiered by Finnish soprano Tuuli Lindeberg and conductor Teemu Hämäläinen (April 2017), an Ave Maria performed in a cycle of five concerts by organist Yves Castagnet and soloists from the Maîtrise de la Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Paris, a 10-movement Ecumenical Magnificat for soloists, choir and orchestra premiered in Heilbronn in October 2017, a suite for bass clarinet and piano for New York clarinetist David Gould, premiered at the International ClarinetFest in Oostende, Belgium (July 2018), Angel of Lviv for the Ukrainian violinist/organist Ivan Dukhnych as well as the 75-minute song-cycle Lauda and Litany (2018-2021).
As a pianist and organist he has performed in recital or as a soloist with orchestra (Rachmaninov, Handel, Beethoven, Chopin... ) in Europe and North America (BBC TV, France-Musiques, RAI, London Southbank Centre, Cambridge Festival, Vienna Stephansdom, Klangbogen Festival Wien, Heilbronner Meisterkonzerte, Pollini Auditorium Padova, Organnum Istriae (Croatia), Lviv National Opera, Settembre Musicale di Trieste, Cathedrals of Erfurt, Konstanz, Salzburg and Ulm, organ festivals in Arezzo, La Verna, Chartres, Gdansk-Oliwa, Ravenna, Montreal (International Congress of Organists. ..). He has also been a continuo player with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris.
As an interdisciplinary researcher, Peter Bannister holds an M.Th in Systematic and Philosophical Theology from the University of Wales - his academic publications on music and theology include chapters in Messiaen the Theologian (Ashgate, 2009), Twentieth-Century Organ Music (Routledge, 2010), Contemporary Music and Spirituality (Routledge, 2013), Mystic Modern: the Music, Thought and Legacy of Charles Tournemire (Church Music Association of America, 2014) and James MacMillan Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He has given invited presentations at the Institut Catholique de Paris, the Universities of St Andrews, Boston and Gothenburg, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Cardiff BBC Hoddinott Hall, Théâtre du Châtelet... He currently lives in Cluny in Burgundy, where he plays the organ for the Taizé Community.
About the music
My compositional output is polystilistic, shaped by many encounters over the years as well as my perspective as a keyboardist and singer. In an essay entitled "Requiem pour une avant-garde" which proved controversial when it appeared in the 1990s but which with hindsight seems highly perceptive, Benoît Duteurtre identified 3 streams of musical renewal in the late 20th century - France, Eastern Europe and North America. My music perhaps stands at the confluence of these streams, with each new work tending towards one of them in particular, although the waters can certainly get muddied at times! My harmonic language and sense of colour bear the stamp of the French masters from Debussy to Dutilleux or Messiaen, who has fascinated me since my youth and whom I like to regard as the "best friend I never knew", although I did hear him play as an organist during my student years in Paris. Having family ties to Poland, Central and Eastern Europe have also sculpted my musical thinking; the works of Henryk Gorecki and Valentin Silvestrov, as well as unforgettable meetings with Arvo Pärt, offered me a minimalist foil to the complexity of Messiaen and a template for musical engagement with often painful human/historical experience. The American influence expresses itself in jazz elements in many works, as well as a concern for motoric drive: the pianistic heroes of my youth included Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans as well as Wilhelm Kempff or Emil Gilels.
Being a child of London in the 1970s and 1980s, I grew up in an environment saturated with popular music, which inevitably also forms part of my musical identity and has influenced me in ways of which I am not necessarily even consciously aware. It has long seemed clear to me that contemporary "classical" composers ignore developments in more popular idioms to their peril, not least because the level of technical accomplishment and harmonic sophistication of musical creation by those trained at, for example, the Berklee School of Music (or the University of North Texas, breeding-ground for Michael League's Snarky Puppy), matches if not exceeds that of classically-focused conservatoires. This is perhaps why I have always been somewhat suspicious of a rigorous divide between musical styles - one which in retrospect seems artificial, and drawn to those who, like Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek or the Vienna Art Orchestra, have explored the intersections between them. In my own case, my early years as a professional musician were heavily shaped by my study of the history and practice of organ improvisation, in which I sought to synthesize my knowledge of the French tradition (Tournemire, Duruflé, Messiaen) with contemporary jazz theory (notably via Jacques Siron's highly stimulating treatise La Partition Intérieure).
In terms of its subject-matter, I think of my work as proceeding along two axes of thematic reflection. The "vertical" axis deals with theology/transcendence and is largely optimistic; the "horizontal" axis meditates on the "ugly ditch" (Lessing) of human history and tends to be somewhat bleaker. In these musical works, the event of Easter is the primary place where these two axes meet.
"A complete musician who, in his own words "keeps his distance from arguments between schools", a refined orchestrator, he excludes no means of musical expression, most often making use of carefully developed thematic work together with classically-inspired forms renewed by a broad lyricism (more often than not in the service of a profound theological idea)." Eric Lebrun, Guide de la musique d’orgue (Fayard, 2012)
"Over the last 5 years I have had several opportunities to hear and examine the works of Mr Peter Bannister, in particular during a concert where his score "The Tree of Life" was played, and more recently when I was able to study his symphonic music closely. Each time I was seduced by the charm and the depth of thought in these scores whose poetic radiance strikes me as being of a quality that is very rare in our day."
Jean-Louis Florentz (1947-2004), composer, member of the Institut de France (2002)