“His coda for the first movement brought a pin-drop hush to Mechanics Hall, as did his supple interplay with the woodwinds in the second movement… a breath-taking… remarkable musician.”

- Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Massachusetts

“The star turn this year was Peter Tuite who concentrated on pairs of major figures from the 18th and 20th centuries. His approach to the Haydn and Mozart was one of extraordinary calculation and tonal refinement, every note measured and weighted… In the music of the 20th century, he was even more impressive. ”

- The Irish Times

“And no apologies preceded a brilliant Peter Tuite performance at the keyboard… that was piercing in the opening Allegro, ethereal in the Andante and incendiary in the Finale.”

- The Culture Guide, Charlotte North Carolina

“A cheerfully percussive performance… took on with engaging self-assurance…”

- The Washington Post

“But the real peal hid in the centre: the Dimitri Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2 with guest artist, Peter Tuite. Here was the care, clarity, the direction needed… [with] delicacy, reflection and wonderfully atmospheric colouring. He showed the Shostakovich melodies at their most original and songful.”

- The Palm Beach Daily News

 BIOGRAPHY

Praised for his '“astonishing technical facility” (Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Massachusetts), “engaging self-assurance” (The Washington Post) and “extraordinary calculation and tonal refinement” (The Irish Times), Peter Tuite has garnered international acclaim for his recital and concerto appearances throughout the world. From acclaimed performances of Beethoven Concertos to his joint traversal of the complete fifty-two Sonatas for Keyboard by Joseph Haydn, his engagement with the music of the 18th century in particular has been widely praised.   

In May 2020, concurrent with the completion of a new film of the Goldberg Variations (recorded in the Long Room Library of Trinity College Dublin) he was named Founding Fellow of the Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship awarded by the City of Weimar. As the joint creator of the Fellowship, he was appointed Founding Fellow in order to establish the Fellowship parameters, and through direct experience, to set its project milestones. He has since completed a series of innovative recordings and films exploring different perspectives on the late works of Johann Sebastian Bach - with the complete collection presented in September 2021 at a special exhibition featured in the Kessler Rooms of the State Museum of Weimar. He was afterwards named Custodian of the Fellowship in 2021.

As a concerto soloist, he has worked with many renowned conductors from Andrei Boreyko to Courtney Lewis, from Colman Pearce to Gerhard Markson – with classical concerti forming a key part of his repertoire. At the same time, as a devoted chamber musician, he has collaborated with numerous artists, from Hakan Hardenberger to the Vanbrugh String Quartet, from Pekka Kuusisto to singers such as Robin Tritschler and Claudia Boyle. He was one of the regular artists that attended the International Piano Week in Montepulciano, Tuscany, and continues to engage in innovative projects that explore the repertoire in unique and path-breaking ways. Notable amongst these, is his recent project around the Art of Fugue, scheduled for completion in 2024, which involves multiple kinds of technical innovation.  

With the Canadian composer and pianist Douglas Finch, he co-founded the New Lights Festival in London in 2018 - a major festival devoted to contemporary currents in music. The festival explores ideas of newness – from unique collaborations to new compositions, from innovative performance approaches to improvisatory works. The festival has continually expanded since its inception; and for this season (2024), in addition to those performances taking place at the historic King Charles Court at the Old Royal Naval College, performances will also take place at both the Cutty Sark in Greenwich and at the Albany Theatre in Deptford.

In 2023, he also started the New Lights Forum – which involves in-depth interviews with artists and intellectuals and for which he serves as principal curator. Arising from his engagement with documentary form, he released Fugal Travels in 2020 – a contrapuntal radio documentary work which weaves together the voices of six eminent experts speaking about the music of JS Bach. The structure of the work was inspired by the six-part ricercare from the Musical Offering, using some of textures as an model for its construction.

In 2020 he became a Loubser Fellow - joining a small number of internationally acclaimed artists. While in 2022, he was appointed Lead Curator of the new digital exhibition space, PLF Projects & Artefacts. The design-faze for this new initiative has just been recently completed and is set to be unveiled in the spring of 2024. The projects and artefacts on the site are presented in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional formats; with the latter presented as a digital gallery space, where people can explore the projects in a more interactive way.

Educated at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Oxford and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, he subsequently went on to become Head of the Keyboard Faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music - one of the youngest such appointments in its 175-year history. Between 2015 and 2018, he was Head of Piano and Keyboard Instruments at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London and while continuing to serve on the faculty of both these institutions, was appointed Full Titled Professor of the RIAM in June 2021.

He has given master classes around the world – from the United Kingdom to China, from Italy to Japan, from the United States to South Korea, and many other countries besides. Whilst, since 2016, he has served on numerous occasions, as External Specialist for the Royal College of Music in London and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. 

From his longstanding interest in literature, he produced his first poetry collection which was highly commended in the 2015 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Awards. In more recent years, he has developed new hybrid works, featuring poetic declamation and drama accompanied by ancient instruments. The first of these was completed in 2023 and is scheduled for its premiere in London on June 22nd, 2024. 

 WATCH

Excerpt from the upcoming release of Goldberg Variations Take Two - recorded and filmed in Erfurt as part of the Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship - and forming the first of two contrasting films of contrasting interpretations of Bach’s inimitable masterpiece.

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