Bio:
PETER DASENT is a composer, songwriter, pianist and music arranger/director.
He has composed music for film and television (including three early Peter Jackson films), led his own ensemble The Umbrellas for 30 years, written songs for kids (Justine Clarke’s platinum-selling children’s albums) and has played piano for the long-running ABC-TV children’s show Play School since 2000.
Peter was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1954 and learned piano from age 8, discovering the Beatles and other classic sixties pop groups and the music of his father’s collection of jazz 78’s along the way.
1970s
He studied music briefly at Victoria University of Wellington and was a founder member of the bands Spats (1977-79) and The Crocodiles (1980). Two other members of these bands, Tony Backhouse and Fane Flaws, were to become long-time friends and musical collaborators, along with lyricist Arthur Baysting.
1980s
In 1981 Peter moved to Sydney, where he studied for the Associate Diploma in Jazz Studies at the NSW Conservatorium of Music . Encouraged by then course director Don Burrows, Peter formed The Umbrellas in 1985. The band released three albums between 1986 and 1991, and from 1992-2002 toured for the Musica Viva In Schools program, performing throughout NSW and on tours to Fiji and Singapore.
Peter began his screen composition career in 1989 with Peter Jackson’s second film, the Muppets send-up splatter epic Meet The Feebles. He subsequently scored two more Peter Jackson films, Braindead (aka Dead Alive outside Australasia) and the Oscar-nominated Heavenly Creatures.
1990s
During the 90s Peter was in demand as a composer for television, concentrating mainly on documentaries and children’s drama.
2000 to present
His involvement in children’s music began in 2000 with The Underwatermelon Man, a book of absurd poems by Fane Flaws and Arthur Baysting, illustrated by Fane, and set to music by Fane and Peter for an accompanying CD. Singers included Neil and Tim Finn, Renee Geyer, Don McGlashan, Bic Runga, Dave Dobbyn and Jenny Morris.
In 2000 Peter was asked to fill in as pianist on ABC-TV’s PlaySchool, and he has been the regular PlaySchool pianist ever since, writing numerous original songs and producing 3 CDs. In 2005 he produced the first of PlaySchool presenter Justine Clarke’s 3 best selling CDs “I Like To Sing”, and a fourth album, Pyjama Jam, was released in October 2015. Nearly all the songs on these albums were written by Peter with Arthur Baysting.
In 2003 Peter was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to research his long-time interest in the music Italian composer Nino Rota wrote for the films of Federico Fellini. He travelled to the US to meet the composer's daughter and to Italy where he was given access to the Rota archive at the Fondazione Cini in Venice.
He lectures regularly on Rota's Fellini scores at AFTRS in Sydney.
In 2013 Peter recorded a CD of original music for solo piano at the legendary Abbey Road Studio in London. “Songs For Solo Piano” was released on November 6 2015.
In 2015 The Umbrellas released their first album of original music in 20 years "Lounge Suite Tango", and in 2016 "Bravo Nino Rota" was re-released with a new cover and booklet.
In 2017 Blessed Relief, Peter's long-awaited collaboration with Tony Backhouse released their first album "Design For Living".
In 2018 Peter is touring Europe for the first time, playing solo piano concerts in Italy and Germany.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Armchair Records is the label set up by Peter Dasent to release his own music.
The latest release, in August 2016, is actually a re-release of "Bravo Nino Rota" (ARM02), the CD recorded in 2001 of Peter's arrangements of Italian composer Nino Rota's scores for the films of Fererico Felini. The album includes such classics as La Strada, La Dolce Vita and Amarcord. The new 2016 version of the album includes a revised booklet with beautiful artwork from Fane Flaws.
The first Armchair Records release, in May 2015, was "Lounge Suite Tango" (ARM01) by The Umbrellas. Then Peter's solo piano album, recorded at Abbey Road, "Songs for Solo Piano" (ARM03) was released on November 6, 2015. Also on that date the first three Umbrellas albums, "The Umbrellas" (ARM04), "Age of ELegance", (ARM05), and "Soundtrack to the Passing Parade" (ARM06) were re-released - all 3 in digital form and "The Umbrellas" and "Soundtrack to the Passing Parade" on CD.
You can purchase any of these at your local red store (yes, they do exist and should be able to order it for you - if not please let me know) or head to HERE, Watefront Records, and find it on there. They are also available for digital download and previewing on iTunes.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).