Peter Gregson (born Edinburgh, Scotland 1987) is an award winning cellist and composer “working at the forefront of the new music scene” (The New Yorker) He has premiered works by composers including Tod Machover, Daníel Bjarnason, Joby Talbot, Gabriel Prokofiev, Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Steve Reich, Martin Suckling, Howard Goodall, John Metcalfe, Scott Walker, and Sally Beamish; he also collaborates with many of the world’s leading technologists, including Microsoft Labs, UnitedVisualArtists, Reactify and the MIT Media Lab. He was awarded the Spirit of Scotland Award in 2008 for his contribution to the arts in Scotland.
Peter developed and was commissioned to compose ‘The Listening Machine’, a data sonification of Twitter in collaboration with Daniel Jones and Britten Sinfonia for the BBC/Arts Council’s “The Space”, where it ran continuously between May-January 2013 and was cited as an important addition to the field.
His debut solo album, ‘Terminal’, was commissioned by Bowers & Wilkins and launched in April 2010. A limited edition 10′′ vinyl was commissioned by Mute Records in May 2011, featuring new solo works for Peter written by Max Richter and Jóhann Jóhannsson and was released at the ‘Short Circuit’ Festival at The Roundhouse. In May 2012, Nonclassical released Gabriel Prokofiev’s ‘Cello Multitracks’, a cello suite written for Peter which the two have toured around the world.
‘Lights in the Sky’, his second studio composed album, is was released on August 19th, 2014, and was launched at Imogen Heap’s REVERB Festival at the Roundhouse in London.
American classical label, Sono Luminus, commissioned Gregson’s third full length album, TOUCH.
Following this record, Peter was commissioned to score Playstation’s open-world game, BOUNDLESS, which was released in mid 2018.
Gregson was signed to an exclusive multi-album record deal by the oldest classical label, Deutsche Grammophon (Universal Music) in 2018, and his first record, BACH RECOMPOSED, was released in October 2018, after being debuted at festivals around the world including Reeperbahn Festival Hamburg, the first Yellow Lounge in Beijing (broadcast live to 500,000 people in China), MAMA Festival in Paris, and others.
Spitfire Audio, the industry leading orchestral sample library producers, commissioned released a sample library of Peter’s extended and experimental cello techniques, which can be heard on award winning TV shows and movies, including BAFTA winning Sherlock, 2014 Ivor Novello award winning Ripper Street, The Epic of Everest, Ron Howard’s In The Heart of the Sea, Wonder Woman, Mission Impossible – Fallout, Sherlock, Planet Earth 2, and countless others, collaborating with composers including Hans Zimmer, Rupert Gregson-Williams, David Arnold, Dario Marionelli, and Lorne Balfe.
He is also in demand across the pop industry, having collaborated with Rag n Bone Man, Public Service Broadcasting, and most recently, as both featured cello soloist and conductor for Ed Sheeran’s record breaking album, DIVIDE.
His first feature film as composer, ‘A Little Chaos’, for Lionsgate and BBC Films, was directed by Alan Rickman and starred Kate Winslet, Helen McCrory, Matthias Schoenaerts and Stanley Tucci. His score was critically well received and earned him a nomination for the Public Choice Award at the 2015 World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, Belgium.
Over the last few years, he has continued this prolific, high quality work ethic, not only releasing his fifth and sixth studio albums ‘Patina’ and ‘Quartets 3 & 4’, but also a multitude of projects and collaborations; all of which cement Gregson as one of the most talented composers in contemporary classical music.