Peter Neville
Peter Neville is one of Australia's most accomplished percussion players. He has a particular interest in twentieth-century music and has worked extensively with ensembles including Elision, the David Chesworth Ensemble, the Southbank Ensemble, Jouissance, the Chronochromie Duo and Nadoya.
Peter Neville is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, where in 2000 he was appointed Head of Percussion. Before that appointment he worked as a freelancer across a wide range of musical styles.
As a member of the Australian Youth Orchestra he toured Europe in 1984, performing at the Royal Albert Hall and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He spent fifteen years as a part-time percussionist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, including its 1988 tour of Japan and its Australian tour with Elton John. With the MSO he took part in the Australian premieres of Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony, in the presence of the composer, and Krzysztof Penderecki's Te Deum, conducted by the composer, and in the orchestra's all-Takemitsu programme at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, again in the composer's presence. He has also worked with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London in their Melbourne performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 under Vladimir Ashkenazy.
His theatre credits include musicals such as West Side Story, Cats, Hello, Dolly!, The Secret Garden and three Australian tours of the Broadway The Pirates of Penzance. He toured Australia as musical director of Tap Dogs, and other stage work includes Playbox Theatre's Australia/China tour of Cho-Cho-San and Richard the Third with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
As percussionist of the Elision Ensemble he premiered Chris Dench's Driftglass and Liza Lim's operas The Oresteia and Yu-Ling Jie. Other contemporary opera premieres include Brian Howard's Metamorphosi with the Victorian State Opera, Andrew Ford's Poe and Michael Whitiker's The Bamboo Flute with the Australian Opera, and Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek with ChamberMade Opera.
He has supported the Bolshoi Ballet, the Russian State Ballet, the Nureyev Farewell Tour and the Netherlands Dance Theatre. With HumanVeins Dance Theatre he took part in Australian premieres of Yannis Xenakis's Oresteia, and was guest drummer with the Balanescu Quartet for three Australian seasons of Possessed with the Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre.
His recordings range from Elision to pop albums by Peter Andre and Deborah Conway and Paul Schütze's experimental industrial album New Maps of Hell. Besides Elision he has been a member of Jouissance, Nadoya, the David Chesworth Ensemble, the Southbank Ensemble, the duo Chronochromie and The Zappa Instrumentaale, among others, recording and touring with several of these groups to Norway, Estonia and the USA.
He has also developed a profile as a composer, writing for percussion quartet, voice, percussion and saxophone quartet, for the Southbank Ensemble, and for companies such as Handspan Theatre and Skylark/Playbox.
Peter Neville appears on
Immersion
Six musicians journey into an exploration of darkness and light, immersing themselves in an unknown landscape. Wholly open to acts of transformation upon their psyches, they sink into an abyss of dreams.
Bright Vessel
Tall Poppies is proud to release Bright Vessel, an important collection of Australian works for solo oboe and oboe d’amore, gathered and performed by Stephen Robinson.
Peter Neville is a member of
Southern Cross Philharmonia
Southern Cross Philharmonia was a fully professional orchestra established in Melbourne in 2005 as a not-for-profit organisation. It championed past and present Australian music within a framework of international repertoire, and was directed by the late Gerald Gentry.
Jenny Game Ensemble
The Jenny Game Ensemble provides an opportunity for musicians from a variety of backgrounds to collaborate. In addition to jazz, the musicians involved work in classical, improvised, folk, popular and experimental musical styles.