What is TAMTRI?
The Australian Music Theatre Research Institute (TAMTRI) was established by composer and writer Peter Wyllie Johnston in 2010. Peter is the current director of TAMTRI and provides research services in the fields of music and music theatre. TAMTRI's services are used for publications, specialist lectures, academic conferences and in the music theatre industry.
August 2018 Concert Production of Peter Wyllie Johnston's musical Moses - The Spirit of Freedom
A concert performance of the musical, with orchestra, is currently in planning for 2018. Details to be announced.
Background: In 2011, Peter Wyllie Johnston was appointed Honorary Associate Professor in the Faculty of the VCA and MCM at the University of Melbourne. Since then he has created and lectured 'Musical Theatre In Context', a course which analysed the development of musical theatre from 1900 to the present. In 2012 he conducted a major research symposium: Rodgers and Hammerstein - Understanding the Phenomenon, with international guests of honour Oscar Hammerstein III and Ted Chapin, Global President of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization. (See: Ted Chapin Travels To Melbourne). He has published Morag Beaton -- Her Life and Her Art (new edition, TBA 2018), The Nick Enright Songbook (Currency Press, 2014), and in 2015 he wrote the Foreword (1000 words) for The Craig Christie Songbook, published by Origin Theatrical, Sydney. With Peter Pinne, he is currently completing a major work on the history of the Australian musical for publication in 2019. Peter is also the author of From The Melburnian – Essays and Articles on the Broadway Musical, the Australian Musical, Opera and Classical Music (launched by Jeanne Pratt AC in September 2011) His other writing credits include numerous articles and reviews on music published in academic journals and in The Australian, Sunday Age, The Melburnian, Opera Australasia, Soundscapes, OnStage, www.artshub.com and The Times (UK), and several short biographies of the great Australian pianist, Geoffrey Tozer.
Photograph Copyright © Geoffrey Tozer 2002
Copyright © Estate of Geoffrey Tozer 2009
Photograph Copyright © Geoffrey Tozer 2002
Copyright © Estate of Geoffrey Tozer 2009
Biography
Peter Wyllie Johnston is an Australian writer and composer of light music. He is currently the Director of the Australian Musical Theatre Research Institute (TAMTRI).
Peter was born in Melbourne. He learnt the piano from the age of five and later studied singing and piano at the Canberra School of Music (1985-1987) and the Victorian College of the Arts (1988-1989) where his teachers were Dame Joan Hammond, Ronald Maconaghie and Alexander Semetsky. In 1989 Peter was elected a Full Composer Member of the Australasian Performing Right Association, having produced his first composition for the piano (A Waltz in E Minor) at the age of twelve and, at fourteen, written the score for the short Australian feature film Girl On The Boulevard (1975). His first major composition, a musical entitled Moses-the Spirit of Freedom underwent a lengthy process of development including workshops in Australia and England with a production in London, a summer concert in the Hamptons (New York) and a concert of excerpts at Kaufmann Concert Hall, Manhattan, and a further workshop performance in Hampshire, UK. Excerpts were also heard in The Spirit of Freedom Concert, part of the Barossa International Festival of Music (2002), conducted by Timothy Sexton, and in a series of sold-out performances of the complete musical at the Ford Theatre, Geelong Performing Arts Centre (2004). Several years later, the full score of the musical was finally completed, orchestrated in London by one of the world’s leading orchestrators: Julian Kershaw (Sweeney Todd, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Notting Hill, Angels and Demons). Peter is the co-writer on a new musical Girl in Pink (2014), with music and lyrics by Joanna White.
Peter has sung in opera, musical theatre and cabaret. He first sang boy soprano roles with the Australian Opera company appearing for several years, in operas including Turandot, Tannhouser, Tosca and Boris Gudonov. In 1988 and 1989 he sang (baritone chorus) with the Victoria State Opera. Since 1985 he has performed in piano bars and cabaret in New York, London, Washington DC, Honolulu, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide, including the cabaret "Of Things Australian" (2000) which was produced for two seasons at The Firebird Café in Manhattan, "Fewster and King-Pioneers of the Australian Musical" at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival (2005) and "Kenneth Duffield-From Adelaide to the West End" also at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival (2007). In 2007, he presented a highly successful musical cabaret and lecture, "Forgotten Australian Musicals" at the Victorian Arts Centre, as part of their Spotlight Lecture Series. In 2008, he devised and presented a comprehensive lecture series, "The Jewish Influence On Broadway", as part of the Florence Melton Programme (a project of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem).
His PhD was entitled "Who's Playing Our Song? The Development of the Australian Musical 1900-2000". He was educated at the University of Melbourne (Bachelor of Laws and Doctor of Philosophy 2008), La Trobe University (Bachelor of Arts and Diploma in Education) and the Australian National University (Master of Laws Pr. with First Class Honours 1988 for his thesis entitled "The Operation and Development of the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA)").
As the sole Executor of the Estate of the late virtuoso pianist Geoffrey Tozer, Peter is responsible for the substantial Tozer Archive (which houses more than 12,000 documents and 900 recordings of Tozer's Australian and international performances from 1963 to 2009), including the forthcoming publication and performance of more than 200 Tozer compositions for the piano, violin, cello and other string instruments, choral works and works for pipe organ.
Current Activities
Peter is currently completing his second full-length musical, and is Consultant on The Eulogy, a full-length documentary on the life and art of virtuoso pianist Geoffrey Tozer, to be premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August 2018.
TAMTRI Activities and Services
Publications
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Specialist Lectures
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The Musical Theatre Industry
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Academic Conferences
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