WHO IS PETER PRINGLE?
I was unsure about including this page in a website whose subject was supposed to be the THEREMIN. I offer this page in the spirit of fun. Some of the photos I have included I find quite humorous today although, at the time they were taken, I probably took whatever I was doing more or less seriously. This is not an autobiography. I couldn't possibly write my autobiography because too many people would sue me! There are many gaps in what follows. It was only my intention to present a brief, general overview, upsetting as few people as possible in the process.
Most thereminists agree that the theremin should never be anyone's first instrument. My first instrument was the piano. I also enjoyed singing, and joined the children's chorus of THE CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY in 1954 and began to sing professionally. I mention this because my subsequent life-long love of opera has had a huge influence on the kind of music I like to play on the theremin as well as the style in which I play it. In the 1960's I moved from Toronto to New York City where, among my other activites, I began studying the classical lute with theremin cellist Leonid Bolotine. I quickly discovered that I could finance my exotic musical interests through mainstream popular songwriting, something which came quite naturally to me. I went to India to study the surbahar.
Here I am in India in the mid 1960's. This was my very first surbahar (it is not the one which is featured on MANY VOICES). I lived in several different countries over the next few years, financing my travels through songwriting and filmscoring. Because of my lifelong love/hate relationship with the spotlight, I frequently worked using a variety of 'noms de plume'. At that time, I collaborated with some of the most famous and successful songwriters in the business. I moved to L.A. in the mid 1970's, signed a deal with Warner Records and put out my first LP.
I put out a number of records on Warner but I didn't find California a particularly creative place. I had a lot of fun there, but I didn't really get much done. When I think back on the time I spent in California in the 1970's, it seems like a party that went on for five years. In 1980 I moved back East, signed a deal with A&M RECORDS and continued putting out LP's.
I look at these things today and all I can do is laugh. The album cover above was a portrait of me as the Tarzan of the 1930's Johnny Weismuller - wet head and all. What was I thinking!
If you combined New York and Paris, you'd have the City of Montreal. A North American city with a decidedly French flavor. I moved there in the early 1980's and signed a deal for a series of television shows. Television is the "fast food" of the entertainment industry but it was a lot of fun and I didn't have to leave town in order to do it.
Here is a photo of me and teenaged Celine Dion. According to the French tabloid headline, "she dreams of singing a duet with Peter Pringle". We actually did sing together many times.
I also sang with Nana Mouskouri..........
and Petula Clark.........and anybody else who came within 50 feet of me. By the mid 80's I was as tired of pop singing as pop singing was of me, so I changed direction (something I do every few years or so). I wrote myself a one-man show based on the life and work of the late British playwright, actor and singer Sir Noel Coward. This play, called NOEL COWARD: A PORTRAIT occupied the next few years of my life.