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The English pianist, organist, lecturer and teacher of keyboard studies, John Peace, BA, LRAM, ARCO was educated at Huddersfield College. Awarded scholarships to read music at University College, Durham University, he has subsequently followed a career as a soloist, chamber recitalist and teacher of the piano and organ. Earlier in his own career as a solo pianist (During the 1980's), he took advice from distinguished concert pianist and Royal College of Music professor Gordon Fergus-Thompson.
In the 1960's and 1970's, John Peace was Organist at various churches in Hereford & London, and since then in Liverpool, where he was organist and choir director at St Mary's Parish Church, Walton for ten years until 2004. He has been Musical Director of the Liverpool Metropolitan Opera and Liverpool Italian Opera Company and has worked with many leading opera and concert singers. For some years now he has been the pianist in the Elegant Music group, which offers fully professional performances and 'Palm Court' or 'lounge music' for corporate and celebratory occasions. From 1980 to 1992, he directed the lunchtime recital series at Liverpool Parish Church, reviving a tradition going back to the 1940's and featuring many eminent musicians. He was pianist with the Liverpool Chamber Music Group until 1988 and now performs with Ensemble Liverpool, whose members are drawn from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO).
John Peace has given numerous recitals as soloist, chamber music pianist and accompanist, with members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra and Ulster Orchestra, and St Helens Sinfonietta, etc. He has made BBC broadcasts, and performed in RLPO recitals and concerts, at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall and St George's Hall, Liverpool, Williamson Art Gallery in Wirral, Chester Town Hall, Worcester Three Choirs Festival, Horniman Museum Dulwich, both Liverpool Cathedrals, Cross St United Reformed Church Manchester, St Bride's and Ullet Road Churches in Liverpool, Wakefield Cathedral, for the Wigan Music Society, Rochdale Music Society, Manchester Bach Society and St Helens Sinfonietta, , recitals in Devon, Dorset and for many other events and venues. During 2009-2010 he gave a series of piano recitals in the Stockholm area of Sweden.
John peace was the pianist for the first-ever known recording of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Piano Quintet, realised from a copy of the original handwritten score by his colleague Martin Anthony Burrage, and performed, probably for the first time in living memory, by their chamber group, Ensemble Liverpool (then known as Live-A-Music) in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall at a public recital on November 7, 2001.;
John Peace has been Director of Music in schools in Durham, Hereford, Wakefield and London, and was a part-time music tutor for the Open University from 1970 to 1977. From 1973 to 1992, he was Senior Lecturer in Music, Head of Keyboard Studies and a course leader at the Liverpool (Adult and Further Education) College's School of Performing Arts. He has many years' experience of piano teaching at all levels. A former pupil, Ian Hobson (now Head of Keyboard Faculty, University of Urbana-Illinois, USA and international soloist) has subsequently won several important prizes including first place in the 1981 Leeds International Piano Competition.
John Peace has lectured and performed at several European Piano Teachers’ Association (EPTA) International Conferences in London, Manchester & Liverpool. EPTA has regional and national groups in over forty countries. In 1991, he inaugurated the Merseyside branch of the EPTA and has given a number of lecture-recitals at EPTA International Conferences in London. At the 2008 EPTA Conference (held in Liverpool), he was again a member of faculty, giving a recital centred around the pianistic heritage in Merseyside. He also held organ appointments and choral directorships in Durham, Hereford, London, Liverpool. He currently lives in Liverpool.
John Peace is author of a book on piano technique The Complete Pianist - the Whiteside & Dalcroze approach 1993 (Castillon Press), also of a study of the songs of Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Ravel. |
