CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Peter Dasent
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City/Place:
Sydney
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Country:
Australia
Life & Work
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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.
More
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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.
Clips (more may be added)
We use the mathematics of the small world phenomenon to transform the creative universe into a creative village wherein all are connected by short pathways to all... (Wolfram explains how above)
This Integrated Global Creative Economy uncoils from a sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix...
Great culture is great power.
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
Our Matrix was conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Hence A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until...
And hence a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found us (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
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 founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.comAcross the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Wolfram MathWorld
Ex Terra Brasilis
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Roberto Mendes
Luciano Calazans
Gustavo Caribé
J Velloso
Lázaro Ramos
Fernando Guerreiro
Maria Marighella
Russell Okung
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
RÁDIO MATRIX