Pete Cooper plays, teaches, composes, records and writes about fiddle music. He is best known for his tutorial book/CD The Complete Irish Fiddle Player (1995), published in the USA by Mel Bay, and his more recent collections issued by Schott: Irish Fiddle Solos (2004), English Fiddle Tunes (2006) and Eastern European Fiddle Tunes (2007).

After years of performing, travelling and playing in too many late-night sessions, he brings a relaxed, good-humoured approach to his workshops and concerts alike. He also sings, backing himself on fiddle, and plays the mandolin. His unusual fluency in different styles - English, Irish, Scottish, Old Time, Swedish, Eastern European - has been described as 'chameleon-like'.

He travels all over the country to teach and perform, and has also made recent trips to China (2004), India (2007) and Japan (2008). A firm believer in lifelong learning, Pete has run regular fiddle courses in London since the mid-1980s, bringing his group classes under one roof in 2001 as the 'London Fiddle School'.

Born in 1951 in the Midlands village of Gnosall, Pete took violin lessons from the age of nine with classical teacher Alan D'Agorne, though never with the idea of playing for a living. From grammar school in Stafford he won a scholarship in 1970 to Oxford, and read English at Balliol College, before moving to Brixton, south London.

Outside the folk music world, Pete may be familiar to TV viewers from his appearance in 'Property is Theft', Vanessa Engel's acclaimed 2006 film in the BBC 'Lefties' series, about life in Villa Road, Brixton, a squatting community he lived in during the mid-1970s. He was a leading 'political' squatter before being lured away, as Engel's film amusingly shows, to join a commune of Primal Screamers. In the film he talks of the radical theories, lifestyles and sexual politics of the street, and sings 'The World Turned Upside Down', Leon Rosselson's song about the Diggers.

In 1976 he was playing in the Villa Road band 'Cuckoo's Nest', which supported 'The 101-ers', Joe Strummer's band before 'The Clash', at a Mayday gig at City Poly, Aldgate. He also got to know his Irish neighbour Sean MacLaughlin, a legendary Armagh-born fiddler famed in Ireland, according to Ciaran Carson's book 'Last Night's Fun', as 'The Shadow'.