Peter Walls has an international reputation as an early music specialist. Appointed Professor of Music at Victoria University of Wellington in 1993, Peter Walls has a DPhil in Musicology from Oxford. He has recently been appointed Emeritus Professor of Music at Victoria University.
Peter has always maintained a balance between scholarship and performance, initially as a violinist, and latterly as an orchestral, choral, and opera conductor. He has held visiting fellowships at Magdalen College, Oxford and Exeter College; at Magdalen he was also the Waynflete lecturer.
Peter prepared and conducted The Tudor Consort in its recording of Peter Philips sacred motets for NAXOS. The release was listed by Neue Musik Zeitung as one of the top early music CDs of 2002 and received a CHOC award from Le Monde de Musique. Peter has also conducted many premieres of New Zealand works, including Jack Body’s opera Alley for the 1998 International Festival of the Arts.
Peter’s first book, Music in the English Courtly Masque (Oxford, 1996), was awarded the Derek Allen prize by the British Academy and an Outstanding Academic Book award from Choice. A new book, History, Imagination and the Performance of Music (Suffolk, UK, & Rochester NY, 2003), has received glowing reviews.
Peter is currently the Musical Director of the Opus Chamber Orchestra of Hamilton and Chief Executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
