PETER URPETH
Peter accompanying Nosferatu, Faclan 2012
Peter Urpeth (b Romford, Essex 1963) is a pianist, harmonium player and composer working mostly in improvisation, jazz, theatre music and alternative performance art forms. In 2011 and 2012 he provided live accompaniment to two dark but very different classics of early cinema, Nosferatu and Vampyr.
This year, 2013, he will be the resident pianist in the bar at the late night club, where he will be joined by a variety of guests providing ambient mood music to end the festival.
His work in the theatre and with film started with on-stage accompaniment to Steve Berkoff’s ‘Fall Of The House of Usher’; in Perrier Award-winning shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Donald Swann (Flanders & Swann) in the Fania Williams / Richard Crane Company; with award-winning writer/performer Leon Robinson and most recently, in a series of collaborations with poet, film-maker, artist and storyteller, Ian Stephen. Silent movies are in his blood as his aunt, Constance Urpeth, was a performer in cinemas throughout London during the heyday of the silent movie era.
Favouring ad hoc and loose long-term partnerships, Peter has, over the last 30 years, worked with some of Europe’s finest improvising musicians including saxophonists Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill & Raymond MacDonald, guitarist Derek Bailey, trumpeter Jon Impett, and vocalist Maggie Nicols. His current group projects include a trio with John Russell and Phil Wachsmann. He has given performances at the Purcell Room (South Bank Centre, London), and on British Council Tours in France, Belgium and Holland, as well as playing in the Czech Republic with Ian Stephen.
As well as being a musician, Peter is a novelist and poet. His first novel ‘Far Inland’ was published by Birlinn Polygon in 2006.