Peter read music at Kings College Cambridge, singing as a choral scholar under the direction of Sir David Willcocks and Sir Philip Ledger.  After a year’s study in Durham, where he was conductor of the University Chamber Choir, he became Director of Music first at Leighton Park School in Reading, then Oundle School, Northamptonshire and, from 1985, at Christ’s Hospital in Horsham.  During that time he conducted many operas and orchestral concerts, and worked with both adult and children’s choirs, recording a number of CDs on the Guild and Carlton Labels.

Peter was a director of the National Youth Music Theatre from 1978- 2000, composing and directing many shows during that time.  His compositions for the NYMT include Bendigo Boswell (BBC TV 1983), Jack Spratt VC (Edinburgh Fringe First 1985), The Little Rats (Sadler's Wells 1989), Aurelius (Edinburgh 1997), and Pendragon (Far East, London, Edinburgh, Broadway, BBC TV, recorded on the TER Label).  Other compositions include The Dream of the Rood (1993), a sacred music drama commissioned by St Albans Abbey for their Twelfth Century Celebrations, and Out of the Mouths of Children (2011) for unaccompanied Double SATB and Children’s Choir, commissioned for the Tagore Festival in Calcutta.

From 2001 to 2011, Peter was Headmaster of Lichfield Cathedral School, during which time it expanded from a prep school to an all-through, 3-18, coeducational school. He founded a girls choir in Lichfield which is now part of the Cathedral's Music Foundation.

After two years as Director of Music at the Dragon School in Oxford, Peter is now a freelance musician. As well as directing the Portsmouth Festival Choir, he is working on a number of composition projects, examining for the ABRSM, adjudicating various competitions and running choral workshops.