Peter Bucknell

Education

University of Melbourne.

Career

Peter Bucknell began in the performing arts as a classical musician. He performed the Australian premiere, broadcast live by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, of Chaconne for Viola and Orchestra by Michael Colgrass. He performed and recorded as solo violist with Apollo"s Fire, the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Les Concerts du Monde, Los Angeles Musica Viva, and the Geminiani Chamber Orchestra (named for Francesco Geminiani).

A documentary film maker, Peter Bucknell is known for his factual short films and environmental films shot underwater.

Previously a classical viola player, Bucknell learnt violin using the Suzuki Method and went on to study with Russian pedagogue Nelli Shkolnikova. He studied music in Melbourne at the Victorian College of the Arts with Nathan Gutman.

In Los Angeles, California with violist Donald McInness. In Siena, Italy at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana with Yuri Bashmet.

And in Cologne, Germany with Rainer Moog, a student of Walter Trampler at the Juilliard School, the principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan.

Bucknell holds a Bachelor of Economics and Commerce degree from the University of Melbourne and a Doctor of Music degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook where he studied with professor Mitchell Stern. Bucknell was for several years Assistant Professor of viola at the Crane School of Music, State University of New York at Potsdam. Peter Bucknell is the son of Tasmanian-born painter Toni Bucknell of Melbourne, Australia.

Achievements

• He won the Auckland, New Zealand International Viola Congress Competition and the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Award. His Quartet won the Interpretation Prize in the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition.

Membership

As a member of Quatuor Danel (Danel Quartet), specialising in the string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich, Bucknell has appeared at Wigmore Hall, at Louisiana Grange de Meslay in the Loire Valley (Tours), in many other European halls, and on Radio France. As a member of the Stradivari Sextet, Bucknell was loaned the "Mahler Stradivarius."

He was a founding member of the Raw Fish Quartet performing at the George Crumb Festival in New York, concerts in Taiwan and Louisiana Jolla and at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, playing George Crumb"s Black Angels and Steve Reich"s Different Trains. He was a member of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, he recorded with Concerto Köln, and performed with Musica Antiqua Kölane