Born in London but resident in France since 1994, PETER BANNISTER began his musical

training as a member of Trinity Boys' Choir, being initiated into professional music in a
wide variety of contexts ranging from opera performances at the Aldeburgh Festival to
performing on Monty Python's Contractual Obligation album. His first teachers were David
de Warrenne (piano) and Helen Roy (singing). After reading Music at King's College
Cambridge, where he was also a piano and organ accompanist to the Chapel Choir under
Stephen Cleobury, he completed his studies in Paris as a French Government Scholar with
Geneviève Ibanez, Michel Beroff (piano) and organist/composer Naji Hakim. Among his
awards are prizes at the international organ competitions of Chartres (1992) and Nürnberg
(1996) as well as the Prix André Caplet for musical composition from the French Institut
des Beaux-Arts (1999) and three prizes for composition at the international competition in
San Sebastian (2007).

As a composer his catalogue includes some fifty works of orchestral, choral, vocal and
instrumental music, bringing together a highly eclectic range of influences encompassing
everything from Hildegard von Bingen and Bachian counterpoint to Messiaen, Polish
aleatoricism, neo-minimalism and electric jazz. European and North American commissions
and performances have resulted in collaborations with Notre-Dame de Paris, Rencontres
Musicales de La Prée, Saarländischer Rundfunk, 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 with American conductor John Nelson in 2000 had a
decisive impact on his compositional development, leading to the large works for the
Ensemble Orchestral de Paris Nuages de Magellan and Pursued by Bronze Horsemen,
premièred 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 with
the Chicago-based sacred music organization SOLI DEO GLORIA Inc., for whom he wrote a
series of works including Hermosura de Dios for voice and orchestra, premièred by the
Hungarian mezzo-soprano Andrea Melath at the Zemplen Festival in 2010 and an Organ
Concerto in memoriam Albert Schweitzer premièred in Stuttgart Cathedral in 2013. With
SDG he was also the instigator of a large-scale Psalms Project funded by the Lilly
Endowment, commissioning new concert and liturgical works from a roster of leading
international composers including James MacMillan, Gavin Bryars, Eriks Esenvalds, Richard
Dubugnon, Sven-David Sandström and Aaron Jay Kernis.

Recent compositional projects have included a Miserere for voice and orchestra premièred
by the Finnish soprano Tuuli Lindeberg and conductor Teemu Hämäläinen (April 2017), an
Ave Maria performed in a series of five concerts by organist Yves Castagnet and soloists
from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, an extended Ecumenical Magnificat for soloists, choir
and orchestra premièred in Heilbronn in October 2017 and a bass clarinet and piano suite
for the New York clarinettist David Gould (with whom he recorded the duo CD The
Forgotten Clarinet in 2014) to be performed at the international ClarinetFest in Ostende
(July 2018). Future plans include a work for the 100th anniversary of Polish independence
to be premièred at the Polish Embassy in Paris in November 2018, pieces for the early
keyboard virtuoso Marcia Hadjimarkos and Ukrainian violinist/organist Ivan Dukhnych, a
recording with US bass Jared Schwartz, as well as the upcoming CD voice and piano release
Lauda and Litany, the first volume of a large-scale interdisciplinary project in which Peter
Bannister appears simultaneously as baritone, pianist and composer.

As a pianist and organist he has appeared in concert/broadcast and 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, Festival Klangbogen Wien, Schwäbisch Gmünd European Church Music
Festival, Heilbronner Meisterkonzerte, Pollini Auditorium Padova, Lviv National Opera,
Settembre Musicale di Trieste, Erfurt, Konstanz, Salzburg and Ulm Cathedrals, organ
festivals in Arezzo, La Verna, Chartres, Oliwa, Ravenna, Montreal International Congress of
Organists...) as well as being a continuo player with the Paris Chamber Orchestra and
Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He has a special interest in showcasing the work of the
younger generation of contemporary composers (Roxanna Panufnik, Pawel Lukaszewski,
Eriks Esenvalds, Dobrinka Tabakova…), as well as having a particular association with the
music of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, who recently dedicated his Op. 275 piano
pieces to him.

Peter Bannister’s first conducting experience came during his years working in the opera
and choral world (Opéra National de Paris, Théâtre du Châtelet, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence,
Accentus Chamber Choir...) as a pianist, coach and assistant for conductors including Sir
Simon Rattle, James Conlon, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. In 2008 he
conducted the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Maîtrise de Paris and French Army Choir in his
oratorio Et iterum venturus est in the closing concert of the Messiaen centenary cycle at
the church of La Trinité in Paris. In 2013 he conducted a Mendelssohn-Honegger-Bannister
program at the Palais-Omnisports-Paris-Bercy, including his work Breathe in Me, which he
had previously premièred as a baritone in Hungary with Budapest Opera soprano Beata
Trubin and US conductor Delta David Gier. In March 2016 he directed his electroacoustic
Stabat Mater with the Warsaw-based Hashtag Ensemble at the Poznan International New
Music Festival.

Holder of a Master’s Degree in Systematic and Philosophical Theology from the University
of Wales, Peter Bannister’s academic publications on music and theology have included
contributions to the volumes Messiaen the Theologian (Ashgate, 2009), Twentieth-Century
Organ Music (Routledge, 2010), Contemporary Music and Spirituality (Routledge, 2013) and
Mystic Modern: the Music, Thought and Legacy of Charles Tournemire (Church Music
Association of America, 2014). He has also been a guest lecturer and presenter at St
Andrews, Boston and Southern Methodist Universities, Institut Catholique de Paris, Calvin
and Wheaton Colleges…
After 20 years in Paris as a freelance musician and singer/organist for the American Church
in Paris, he currently lives in Cluny in Burgundy, where he serves as organist for the Taizé
Community.

_________________________

“A complete musician who, in his own terms, “keeps his distance from quarrels over
style”, a refined orchestrator, he excludes no means of musical expression, most often
relying on elaborate thematic development as well as classical forms of inspiration
renewed by a flourishing lyricism…” Eric Lebrun, Guide de la musique d’orgue (Fayard,
2012)

“Exciting Meisterkonzert with Peter Bannister in the Deutschordensmünster. A large

audience gave much applause for a truly masterly concert” Lothar Heinle, Heilbronner
Stimme (October 2017)

"Peter Bannister - such a British virtuoso (yes, the type who plays impossible stuff while
thanking you for turning a page for him from time to time) [...] prodigious ease and
breathing, both in the ferocious accompaniments to pieces by Vierne and Wolf/Reger and
in his solos." Bertrand Ferrier, Paris (December 2017)

“Gould and Bannister play it brilliantly… Expert musicianship of pianist Peter Bannister.”
Larry Guy, review of The Forgotten Clarinet, The Clarinet magazine (2015)

"Over the last few 5 years, I have had several opportunities to hear and read the works of
Mr Peter Bannister, particularly at a concert where his piece The Tree of Life was played,
and more recently when I studied his symphonic music. Every time I was seduced by the
charm and depth of thought of the scores whose poetic radiance seems to me to be of a
quality very rare in our days." Composer Jean-Louis Florentz+ (1947-2004), Membre de
L’Institut (2002)

www.peterjohnbannister.com