I only just read of Pete's death from myeloma in the latest Vortex programme.
Yorkshire-born, Pete came into jazz by way of NYJO at the beginning of the 1970s. A self-described autodidact, he was of the group that produced the generation that followed in the shadow of the John Surmans, John Taylors and Keith Tippetts of this world, including trumpeter Dick Pearce, saxophonists Pete Hurt, Chris Biscoe and Tim Whitehead, all of whom he has maintained intermittent musical relationships. John Taylor regarded Pete highly - at one point describing him as representing the next stage in jazz piano after Herbie Hancock - and Henry Lowther described him to me as "a genius".
Pete would probably admit that his underexposure was as much down to his own unpushiness as the course of jazz evolution. His main income seems to have come from teaching, and I have only one CD to his own name - the 2001 CD "Rich Core", on Juce Records - a trio with Fred Thelonius Baker on electric bass and drummer Tony Levin, though since the Don Rendell 1979 release "Earth Music" he has appeared on many others', for which I will need to scour my index cards if anyone here is interested, yet Pete did several broadcasts for Radio 3 in the 1980s, in a group with Eddie Parker playing his own sometimes quirky, often very beautiful compositions, and a trio with John Taylor and Steve Arguelles called Foil, which on one occasion joined forces and toured with Vocal Summit (Norma Winstone, Uszula Dudziac, Jay Clayton). To the end he was in Eddie Parker's Hermeto Pascoal-esque group and Henry Lowther's Still Waters.
I think Pete was a perfectionist: for him free jazz and free improvised music was too prone to charlatanry, though as a free improviser himself in passages allocated for him to freely extemporise he was equal to the best, in my own view. One often sensed considerable effortfulness in his giving full attention as to how to back the soloist, but most importantly to build a solo without resort to commonplace or cliche, thinking each step at a time yet, while holding back on fast technique, though fully capable of it, creating allusive self-contained compositional structures entirely his own that were capable of removing one from whatever the song in question was in the way Herbie Hancock succeeded in doing on Miles's "My Funny Valentine".
Influenced I think by the rich new approaches to sonority introduced by Django Bates (whom he admired greatly) and others into the Loose Tubes repertoire, Pete had a fine ear for orchestration, which will be celebrated in a celebration to Pete to be held at The Vortex on the 15th April at 4 pm. I just found this interview with Pete, which I intend to read later:
Pete deserves greater recognition, and will be missed.
Yorkshire-born, Pete came into jazz by way of NYJO at the beginning of the 1970s. A self-described autodidact, he was of the group that produced the generation that followed in the shadow of the John Surmans, John Taylors and Keith Tippetts of this world, including trumpeter Dick Pearce, saxophonists Pete Hurt, Chris Biscoe and Tim Whitehead, all of whom he has maintained intermittent musical relationships. John Taylor regarded Pete highly - at one point describing him as representing the next stage in jazz piano after Herbie Hancock - and Henry Lowther described him to me as "a genius".
Pete would probably admit that his underexposure was as much down to his own unpushiness as the course of jazz evolution. His main income seems to have come from teaching, and I have only one CD to his own name - the 2001 CD "Rich Core", on Juce Records - a trio with Fred Thelonius Baker on electric bass and drummer Tony Levin, though since the Don Rendell 1979 release "Earth Music" he has appeared on many others', for which I will need to scour my index cards if anyone here is interested, yet Pete did several broadcasts for Radio 3 in the 1980s, in a group with Eddie Parker playing his own sometimes quirky, often very beautiful compositions, and a trio with John Taylor and Steve Arguelles called Foil, which on one occasion joined forces and toured with Vocal Summit (Norma Winstone, Uszula Dudziac, Jay Clayton). To the end he was in Eddie Parker's Hermeto Pascoal-esque group and Henry Lowther's Still Waters.
I think Pete was a perfectionist: for him free jazz and free improvised music was too prone to charlatanry, though as a free improviser himself in passages allocated for him to freely extemporise he was equal to the best, in my own view. One often sensed considerable effortfulness in his giving full attention as to how to back the soloist, but most importantly to build a solo without resort to commonplace or cliche, thinking each step at a time yet, while holding back on fast technique, though fully capable of it, creating allusive self-contained compositional structures entirely his own that were capable of removing one from whatever the song in question was in the way Herbie Hancock succeeded in doing on Miles's "My Funny Valentine".
Influenced I think by the rich new approaches to sonority introduced by Django Bates (whom he admired greatly) and others into the Loose Tubes repertoire, Pete had a fine ear for orchestration, which will be celebrated in a celebration to Pete to be held at The Vortex on the 15th April at 4 pm. I just found this interview with Pete, which I intend to read later:
Pete deserves greater recognition, and will be missed.
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