For Immediate Release
April 26, 2024
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Songs That Reflect two Parallel Paths…Peter Halperin’s long-awaited debut finds a common thread within passion and perseverance
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By any measure, a debut album that’s taken lifetime to create might seem something of a stretch. However for Peter Halperin, it’s simply the culmination of his pursuit of twin passions — that of making music and his dual career as a teaching and clinical psychiatrist.
In fact, Peter’s new album, Beyond the Storm, has been gestating for over 50 years, proof that his prowess and proficiency have always remained a driving force. “For my entire life, music has held an incredible attraction,” Halperin recently told Martha Vineyard’s MV Times newspaper. “It pulls at the creative heartstrings for people like me, who may have drifted off the path into other careers.”
Due for release on May 3, Beyond the Storm was produced by Fred Mollin, a film and TV composer, music director, music supervisor, songwriter, and the man behind the boards for records by Jimmy Webb, Johnny Mathis, Billy Ray Cyrus, Lamont Dozier and America, not to mention Dan Hill’s international hit ”Sometimes When We Touch.” The album was recorded at the Sound Emporium in Nashville with a group of top Nashville studio musicians.
Fred loves the record and calls it a masterpiece,” Peter says proudly. “It contains 13 of my songs written between 1970-2023. It’s now been 53 years since I wrote two of the songs on it and dreamed of making such an album. I wasn’t ready then, but now I am.”
In fact, one of the songs he originally wrote in 1970, the upbeat and engaging “Going To See My Baby,” recently won a “Judges Choice” award in the New England Songwriting contest.
A creative compilation in the truest sense, the music shared throughout Beyond the Storm runs the gamut in sounds and styles. It veers from the jazzy and jaunty album opener “Sad But True” and the bluegrass finesse of “Oh Yeah,” to the blues-infused “One Man’s Poison,” the soulful sway of “Let Your Heart Decide”, the complex tapestry of “Your Words of Love,” and the acoustic strains of “After I Go.”
In many ways, the album reflects the synergy that exists between Peter’s profession as a psychiatrist and his calling as a musician. Those seemingly disparate threads clearly align in several of the songs. He cites the countrified, steel guitar shimmer and sway of “Till She Believes” as a particular example:
"For years I worked with patients at the end of their lives and I was often present at the end. I both witnessed and tried to facilitate ‘goodbyes’ with loved ones and I was frequently aware that the departing one sometimes waited for days or even weeks until there was an opportunity for emotional resolution. For many, this included wanting to communicate that something profound and even joyous was about to occur.”
Other entries were conceived from a personal perspective. Peter says the pensive and contemplative “The Man I Might Have Been” came to him in a dream, as most of his songs do. “I had just finished installing the recording equipment in my studio,” he recalls. “Having struggled for so many years with the issue of fully devoting myself much more to music and much less to medicine, this song finally opened the door to making the commitment, and therefore the album. When I met Fred Mollin, I felt the confidence to show him my songs with clear conviction and to jump right in to the creative process.“
The driving and defining track “Bring On The Storm” has a different meaning entirely. “Change is storm-like, both destructive and creative,” Peter points out. “I let a relationship be the metaphor for such change.”
In may ways, the songs reflect a lifetime of devotion to the pursuit of a musical muse Peter first found at the age of two when he started playing music on a toy piano. He was writing his own songs by the time he hit his teens, influenced and inspired by the prominent voices of the time, including the Beatles, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Blues Project, the acoustic sounds of the Grateful Dead, and, of course, Bob Dylan. A fan of the folk boom of the early and mid ‘60s, he went on to open for Mississippi Fred McDowell and Happy and Artie Traum and eventually went on to perform at some of the most prominent clubs and coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, among them, The Bitter End, Folk City, and the Gaslight. He later formed a folk duo that played the college circuit while becoming a regular at the iconic folk club called the Main Point, where he opened for the likes of Randy Newman and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. He also played keyboard for a band called Trouble, which held a weekly residence at Folk City an entire year.
Although Peter veered away from the business of music, his passion for music never wavered. He recently cut back his medical practice, leaving him plenty of energy to run his Woodstove Studios, a professional community performance space and recording studio on Martha’s Vineyard, where he currently resides. He hosts a radio show, “Woodstove Studios Presents", that broadcasts these performances on WMVY, the Vineyard station with a worldwide audience.
Granted, some might say his is an unusual — and unlikely — combination of talents. Yet as Beyond the Storm proves, insight and imagination can work well in tandem.
For more information on Peter Halperin, go to www.woodstovestudios.com.