Patina Peter Gregson

• Peter Gregson (b. 1987):
• 1 Hidden 06:15
• 2 Patina 04:11
• 3 Sense 06:16
• 4 Cluster 05:04
• 5 Schema 03:44
• 6 Sequence (Seven) 05:19
• 7 Over 04:39
• 8 Don't Wake 04:21
• 9 Continuum 06:09
• 10 Continuum (Outro) 00:19
• 11 Cluster (Edit) 02:41
• Total Runtime 48:58

Info for Patina

Prolific composer, producer and cellist Peter Gregson has built up a truly impressive profile and might be the most successful composer you have yet to hear of. He has successfully composed music for films, games, ballets and mega hit series such as Bridgerton, and with an astonishing amount of appearances on recordings ranging from Hans Zimmer, BBC HIT Sherlock to Ed Sheeran.

Starting to play cello from when he was four, the instrument is still his composing instrument of choice, although his experiments with sound in production take him well beyond cello concertos, The New Yorker describing him as ‘at the forefront of the new music scene’. Not shying away from modern production, Gregson’s flair for melody, the big lyrical gesture and dreamlike evocations in the lineage of great British composers. With ‘Patina’, his fifth studio album, he delivers his most personal album yet.

The idea of ‘the presence of absence’ was key to the composition of every track on Patina. Gregson would begin writing the music and then, over time, delete their main melodies to see how the harmonies, basslines, and textures would rearrange themselves around that void. Much like how the stain on your table remains where you’ve put your coffee cup, or how glaciers have changed the shape of the earth while they have long since disappeared. “This is a collection of pieces where the sounds have aged, where the music has lived a life.”

He describes the role of his cello like this: “I like the idea of treating my cello as if it were a human voice – singing these modern ‘songs without words’, I wanted the cello to sound like it sounds under my ear when I'm playing, not how a cello sounds half way back in a concert hall.”

The music on Patina was produced to sound a particular way with much accuracy and honesty; valve reverbs, spring reverbs, plate reverbs, analogue delays, Harmonizers, Vocoders, digital reverbs from the 80s were all used to convey the intimacy Gregson sought, explaining in great part why Patina does not sound like a typical classical music release. “It's a very processed and crafted record. The production is absolutely of equal importance as its composition. It’s something unreal, but not unbelievable”

"I wanted the cello to sound like it sounds under my ear when I’m playing, not how a cello sounds halfway back in a concert hall. This music was produced to sound a particular way from where I’m sitting, and that’s the same position where I wanted the listener as well. This is where it’s happening." (Peter Gregson)

Peter Gregson, cello
Additional musicians:
Richard Harwood, cello
Matthew Denton, violin
Richard Blayden, violin
James Boyd, viola
Eoin Schmidt-Martin, viola
Meghan Cassidy, viola
Stephanie Edmundson, viola
Reinoud Ford, cello
Warren Zielinski, violin
Ben Chappell, cello
Tim Lowe, cello
Magnus Johnston, violin
Peter Gregson, programmer
Peter Gregson, mellotron
Peter Gregson, synthesizer programming
Anthony Weeden, conductor

Peter Gregson
is a cellist and composer "working at the forefront of the new music scene" (The New Yorker) Recently, he has premiered works by composers including Tod Machover, Daníel Bjarnason, Gabriel Prokofiev, Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Steve Reich, and Sally Beamish; he collaborates with many of the world’s leading technologists, including Microsoft Labs, UnitedVisualArtists, Reactify and the MIT Media Lab.

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.

His debut solo album, ‘Terminal’, was commissioned by Bowers & Wilkins and launched in April 2010. A limited edition 10′′ vinyl was commissioned by Mute 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 album, composed for cello, piano, and analogue synthesisers, was released at Imogen Heap's 'Reverb Festival' in August 2014.

His third studio album, TOUCH, will be released on Sono Luminus in August 2015.

In demand for his work across major film and television soundtracks, Spitfire Audio developed a sample library of Peter's extended techniques and sounds from his blue, five-string electric cello, all recorded at Pixel, his studio in London.

The score to his first feature film, 'A Little Chaos' , directed by Alan Rickman and starring Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts, is available now on Milan Records.

Booklet for Patina