Peter Holman

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  Peter Holman is a distinguished academic who believes in putting his research into practice. The Parley of Instruments was founded for this purpose in 1979 and is now recognised as one of the leading exponents of Renaissance and Baroque string consort music. Peter continues to direct and conduct the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical Orchestras of The Parley of Instruments as well as the associated vocal ensembles, Psalmody (English 'gallery' repertory) and Seicento (Italian seventeenth-century music).

Peter has been Musical Director of Opera Restor'd since its beginning in 1985, and has directed the music for many baroque opera productions in England and abroad. At the Early Music Festival in Boston, USA, he conducted Purcell's King Arthur in 1985. In 1997 he directed the orchestra for Luigi Rossi's Orfeo, both in Boston, Tanglewood and in Drottningholm, Sweden.

Peter has been Artistic Director of the Suffolk Villages Festival since 1988 and in conductor of the Essex Baroque Orchestra, the festival's resident orchestra. The Suffolk Villages Festival, which is an annual event, promotes high-quality performances of early music in a rural area of eastern England.

As a harpsichordist and organist Peter has performed with, among others, the London Handel Orchestra, the Tilford Bach Orchestra, the Orchestra of St John's Smith Square and the Hanover Band.

He has long been a particular champion of English music, and as founder and director of the much-acclaimed English Orpheus series on Hyperion records, he has been largely responsible for the recent upsurge of interest in English eighteenth-century music, long misunderstood and neglected.

Peter Holman was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music for ten years, and has also taught at many conservatoires, universities and summer schools in Britain, Europe, the USA and New Zealand and is currently Reader in Historical Musicology at Leeds University. He is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3, and is in much demand as lecturer.

Peter regularly contributes articles and reviews to a range of newspapers and journals and has published many editions of early music. His book Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993) was awarded the 1995 Derek Allen Prize by The British Academy. Other books include: Henry Purcell (OUP, 1994) and, in the Cambridge Music Handbook series, Dowland Lachrimae, 1604 (Cambridge University Press, 1999). He was the first musicologist to be awarded a D.Mus. by London University.

'Were there to be any real justice in this world, Hyperion boss Ted Perry and his musical advisor Peter Holman would each receive a knighthood for the incalculable service they have rendered to English Music with the English Orpheus series. It is a project that has nearly single-handedly rescued the nation's music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the ignorant opprobrium of generations of music historians.'

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updated - Wed, 26th March 2003