Peter Pringle

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Peter Pringle is a Canadian musician and television personality, born in 1945. At the age of six he was already singing in the children's choir of the Canadian Opera Company. Later he studied several classical instruments, including lute, sitar and surbahar, and paid for his studies by writing pop songs. Anne Murray recorded some of those songs, and he also sang backing vocals for her.

Music and breakthrough

In 1975 he moved to Los Angeles, where his first album appeared in 1976. In 1980 he went to Montreal and recorded pop songs in English and French. He was twice nominated for a Juno Award as most promising male vocalist, in 1978 and 1982. In 1985 he took part in the French-language charity single Les Yeux de la faim for the famine in Ethiopia. In 1986 he received a Genie Award nomination for the song Cold As Ice, which he wrote with Kevin Hunter for the film Toby McTeague. He also presented television shows and, from 1987, performed a one-man show about Noël Coward. The album Noel Coward: A Portrait came out of it.

Influence

Since 2007 he has attracted attention online with ancient epics and poems, which he performs on his YouTube channel. He plays a wide variety of instruments, from the lyre to the hurdy-gurdy, and delivers many of the texts in their original ancient languages. His recording of the opening lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh has been viewed more than thirteen million times. In this way he is an example of a musician who brings ancient music and texts to a new audience through the internet. In School of Rock he appears with The Silver Lyre of Ur from 2025.

Listening

• 
  The Silver Lyre of Ur · Peter Pringle, 2025

Discography

Studio albums

• 1981Magicien
• 1987Noel Coward: A Portrait
• 2002Many Voices

See also

• Mesopotamia