PETER MANSFIELD Biography - Pioneers, Explorers & inventors

 
 

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PETER MANSFIELD

Conductor, composer, arranger, pianist, Peter Mansfield is a native Bostonian,             
having majored in music at Harvard College where he studied with Eliot Forbes,             
Luise Vosgerchian, Ivan Tcherepnin and F. John Adams. His career began while an           
undergraduate at Harvard, where he arranged for, and eventually directed the               
world-famous Harvard Krokodiloes. He would go on to arrange over 70 songs for             
the group, many of which are still an integral part of the Kroks' repertoire.             
                                                                                           
Following graduation, Peter enjoyed a 20 year tenure as Music Director and later,         
Music Supervisor of the renowned Hasty Pudding Theatricals. It was during this             
time that he met and apprenticed under acclaimed conductor and Boston Pops                 
arranger Eric Knight. Mr. Mansfield later went on to study conducting with James           
Yannatos, chairman of Harvard's conducting department, and with nationally                 
prominent Pops conductor and arranger Newton Wayland. It was from Mr. Wayland             
that in 1981, he inherited the position of Artistic Director and Conductor of             
Adventures In Music, greater Boston's only professional orchestra series for               
young audiences.                                                                           
                                                                                           
Also in 1981, Mr. Mansfield began an affiliation with The Boston Pops Orchestra,           
where he has worked under maestros John Williams and Keith Lockhart as pianist,           
arranger/orchestrator, and music coordinator of several Evening at Pops P.B.S.             
television specials, featuring such artists as Wynton Marsalis, George Benson,             
Leontyne Price, Tommy Tune and The Big Apple Circus. It was also with the Boston           
Pops that his original composition "Casey At The Bat" was premiered with                   
legendary broadcaster Curt Gowdy reciting the famous poem, and most recently,             
during the summer of 2004. Since 1985, Mr. Mansfield's symphonic arrangements             
have been performed by many major U.S. orchestras, and his arrangements are now           
represented in the catalog of G. Schirmer, Inc. in New York.                               
                                                                                           
In September of 1988, he became Conductor and Music Director of Concert On Ice,           
the first-ever international tour featuring Olympic and World Champion figure             
skaters in concert with major U.S. and Canadian orchestras, for which he has               
conducted the orchestras of Atlanta, Dallas, Omaha, Pasadena, San Diego, Seattle,         
Spokane and Vancouver, as well as the American Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy             
Center Opera House Orchestra, the Philadelphia Pops, the National Symphony                 
Orchestra, and in a special national television production in 1995, the Houston           
Symphony.                                                                                 
                                                                                           
Mr. Mansfield served as Pops conductor of the Kansas City Symphony during the             
1997-98 season, and he has also guest-conducted Pops programs for The Hartford (several   
programs in 2003-2004), Milwaukee, New Hampshire and Vancouver Symphony                   
Orchestras, as well as The Hudson Valley Philharmonic.