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Peter Pinne | |
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| Born | Peter Norman Pinne 27 May 1937 Victoria, Australia |
| Occupation(s) | Television producer, writer, composer |
| Partner | Don Battye (1960–1987) [1] |
Peter Norman Pinne (born 27 May 1937) is an Australian-born former television executive, writer and composer who has worked frequently in America and Great Britain.
Pinne started working for the television production company, the Reg Grundy Organisation, as a television executive. Firstly, as Head of Production from 1980, later rising to become a Senior Vice President of the company. During this period, he worked on numerous serials including The Young Doctors , The Restless Years and Neighbours .
He co-composed the theme tune to Sons and Daughters.
In 1992, he was responsible for overseeing the production of Dangerous Women, an American series based loosely on the popular Prisoner. The show was not a huge success running to only 52 one-hour episodes. He also travelled to a number of Latin American countries where he was responsible for overseeing the production of local versions of some of Grundy's most successful hits. He left the Grundy organisation in the late 1990s in order to set up his own record label, Bayview, with fellow former Australian television producer, Don Battye and now writes and composes music. He currently resides in the Brisbane area of Australia.
Since the late 1950s, Peter Pinne (variously working in collaboration with Don Battye, Ray Kolle and/or John-Michael Howson has been one of the most prolific creators of original Australian stage musicals. Examples include:
Most of these musicals were originally performed as amateur or semi-professional productions. Although private demonstration recordings of the scores exist, few of the shows had commercial cast albums released. A song from A Bunch of Ratbags was released as a single, cover versions of two songs from The Computer and Love's Travelling Salesman were included on a 1970 compilation LP Australian Musicals Now, and a studio recording of selections from Red, White and Boogie and Sweet Fanny Adams was released in 1983 on Don Battye's Trigpoint label. The only stage production to generate a complete original cast recording was Caroline; the original LP was released in 1971 and subsequently re-issued on CD (by London-based label Dress Circle Records) in 1998.
Although all of Pinne's musicals were successful in their original productions, few of them have been mounted since. A Bunch of Ratbags was revived in 2005 by Magnormos, which resulted in the release of a "premiere" cast recording. In 2007, Magnormos staged a 30-minute workshop production of Pinne's latest musical, Suddenly Single, which was written in collaboration with Paul Dellit.
In the mid-1990s, Pinne and Battye also wrote a stage musical adaptation of the cult 1970s Australian television series, Prisoner: Cell Block H. The show was first produced in England (where the original series had become more popular than in Australia), in a lavish West End production that starred Lily Savage and original TV cast member Maggie Kirkpatrick, reprising her role as Joan "The Freak" Ferguson.
In addition, Pinne and Battye co-wrote a number of pantomime-like musicals especially for children, which were produced at the Alexander Theatre at Monash University during the 1970s. Mostly based on popular fairy tales, these shows included:
Saturday Night is a 1955 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Julius J. Epstein, based on the play, Front Porch in Flatbush, written by Epstein and his brother Philip.
The Phantom of the Opera is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Charles Hart, additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe and a libretto by Lloyd Webber and Stilgoe. Based on the 1910 French novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, it tells the tragic story of a beautiful soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, masked musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Paris Opéra House.
Keith Joseph Michell was an Australian actor who worked primarily in the United Kingdom, and was best known for his television and film portrayals of King Henry VIII. He appeared extensively in Shakespeare and other classics and musicals in Britain, and was also in several Broadway productions. He was an artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre in the 1970s and later had a recurring role on Murder, She Wrote as the charming thief Dennis Stanton. He was also known for illustrating a collection of Jeremy Lloyd's poems Captain Beaky, and singing the title song from the associated album.
John-Michael Howson is an Australian writer, reporter, entertainer and Melbourne radio commentator. His involvement in the Australian entertainment scene as a writer, producer and performer spans more than 50 years.
Peter Cousens is an Australian actor and singer born in Tamworth, New South Wales. He is the artistic director of the Talent Development Project. He attended The Armidale School in Armidale from 1969 to 1973 and then Gordonstoun School, Scotland. He then spent a year reading Arts at St Paul's College, University of Sydney, before studying at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), graduating in 1978. Cousens was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the Queens Birthday Honours in June 2019 for services to the performing arts and the community.
Shinbone Alley is a musical with a book by Joe Darion and Mel Brooks, lyrics by Darion, and music by George Kleinsinger. Based on the album Archy and Mehitabel: A Back-Alley Opera, which in turned was based on archy and mehitabel, a series of New York Tribune columns by Don Marquis, it focuses on poetic cockroach archy, alley cat mehitabel, and her relationships with theatrical cat tyrone t. tattersal and tomcat big bill, under the watchful eye of the newspaperman, the voice-over narrator and only human being in the show.
Donald Gordon Battye was an Australian composer, writer and television producer, best known for his work with Crawford Productions and Reg Grundy Organisation.
James Millar is an Australian actor, singer and writer. He wrote the musical drama The Hatpin, the song cycle LOVEBiTES and co-wrote the semi-autobiographical musical A Little Touch of Chaos.
Jesus Christ Superstar or Jesus Christ Superstar – Original Australian Cast Recording is an album released in late 1972 on MCA Records. Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera created by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1970. The earliest Australian version was staged from May 1972 to February 1974. This album features Trevor White, Jon English and Michele Fawdon. Together with other cast members, they performed vocals for a studio recording. It was produced by Patrick Flynn, the show's musical director and a conductor for Opera Australia. The album peaked at No. 17 on the Go-Set Albums Chart in June 1973, while it reached No. 13 on the Kent Music Report and remained on its charts for 54 weeks. It appeared in the top 100 on the 1974 End of Year Albums Chart. In May 1973, the album was awarded a gold record for sales of 50,000 albums.
The Hatpin is a musical by James Millar and Peter Rutherford (composer). It was inspired by the true story of Amber Murray who in 1892 gave up her son to the Makin family in Sydney, Australia. Written and developed in 2006–2007, The Hatpin opened at the York Theatre, Seymour Centre in Sydney on 27 February 2008. The musical has received subsequent productions in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Oriel Holland Bennett known by pen name Oriel Gray, was an Australian dramatist, playwright and screenwriter who wrote from the 1940s to 1990s. The major themes of her work were gender equality and "social and political issues such as the environment, Aborigines, assimilation and bush life".
Magnormos is an independent musical theatre production company based in Melbourne, Australia, that specialises in musicals written by Australian writers and lesser-known international works. Its productions have included the Australian premiere of [title of show] in 2010, and the 2011 world premiere of flowerchildren – the mamas and papas story which transferred to Melbourne's Comedy Theatre in 2013. Magnormos has been aligned with Theatre Works since 2003. It received a special Green Room Award certificate for Outstanding Support for New Australian Musical Theatre in 2012.
Sharin Anderson is an Australian singer, guitarist, songwriter, and artist from the outer northern suburbs of Melbourne.
"In Your Arms " is a song by Australian singer Lynne Hamilton. The song was used in the Australian soap opera Neighbours and it was written by the show's executive producer Don Battye and his colleague, Peter Pinne, Executive in Charge of Production. The song was released via Mushroom Records in Australia on 7" vinyl.
David Harris is an Australian actor and singer. In Australia, he is best known for his performances as Chris in Miss Saigon, Fiyero in Wicked and Emmett in Legally Blonde having received Helpmann Award nominations for all three leading roles. Harris also starred as the Baker in Victorian Opera's production of Into the Woods and, in America, as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables opposite Terrence Mann in 2015. He has released two solo albums. Since early 2023, he has played the role of The Duke of Monroth in the Broadway theater production of Moulin Rouge! The Musical.
The Torrents is a 1955 Australian play by Oriel Gray, set in the late 19th century, about the arrival of a female journalist in an all-male newspaper office, and an attempt to develop irrigation-based agriculture in a former gold mining town.
The Ballad of Angel's Alley: A Pocket Opera is an Australian musical set in Melbourne's "push" wars of the 1890s, with book and lyrics by Jeff Underhill and music by Bruce George.
Caroline is a musical with music and lyrics by Peter N. Pinne and book and lyrics by Don Battye from an idea by Leila Blake. It concerns the life and times of Caroline Chisolm, a nineteenth century social reformer known for her work for the welfare of female immigrants in colonial Australia.
Prisoner Cell Block H: The Musical is a stage musical based on the Australian television series Prisoner created by Reg Watson.
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