Home page image: Peter Butler's Ehrbar VIII Salon Grand Piano. Built in Vienna Feb. 1924. Fully refurbished in 2014
Peter Butler is a pianist, composer and music educator living in Bendigo, Central Victoria, Australia.
Pianist
Peter Butler regularly performs both as a soloist and accompanist, with instrumentalists, singers, and choirs. He is available to provide a wide range of music for dinners, functions, and special occasions.
He plays his own original piano solos of popular Broadway songs by composers such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern and numerous others. His extensive repertoire includes songs from the most famous musicals, as well as the music of Elton John, The Beatles, David Bowie, Jim Webb and many other contemporary songwriters.
Peter can provide his own high quality Yamaha electric piano and PA, and can customise his repertoire to suit the occasion, as well as providing new arrangements of special requests.
peterbutlermusic@gmail.com
Composer
In partnership with Librettist Mark Garner, Peter has composed cantatas for Australia’s leading choirs, e.g. Elements of Surprise and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition for Massed Choirs—The Australian Boys Choir, Majellan Singers and The Vocal Consort. Mixed Fortunes ‘a debacle in 4½ scenes' was composed for The Young Voices of Melbourne. He has composed several musicals and song cycles to Mark Garner’s texts, e.g. Court in the Act, Girt by Sea, Motion Sickness, Songs for Long Weekends and A Short History of Song. Peter has composed and performed eight 60 min. CD albums of 112 of his own piano pieces ‘Peter plays Butler’ Volumes 1 to 8; composed since the COVID pandemic global shutdown of 2020/21. Further details can be found in the Works-Other tab.
Music Educator
Dr Peter Butler has taught music education at primary, secondary and university levels for over 40 years. His PhD thesis addressed the topic of music education in Australia since the 1980s. His ten volumes of original short rounds for music teaching—e.g Hickety Pickety, Jingle with a Ball, Sing Hey! ’Tis Spring, On the Susso, etc.—are used by choir directors and music educators across Australia and overseas.