Peter K. Winkler

While a high school student, Winkler studied composition and theory with Howard Brubeck, and at Aspen Music School (1959) with Darius Milhaud. He earned a B.A. in Music at the University of California (1963), studying with David Lewin and Seymour Shifrin, and an M.F.A. at Princeton University, where his principal teacher was Earl Kim. He continued studying with Earl Kim as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University (1968–71) He then joined the music faculty of Stony Brook University, where he taught for 42 years, retiring in 2014. As a pianist, Winkler was the accompanist for Rhoda Levine's improvisational opera group, Play it by Ear from 1996 to 2012, and appears with his wife, violinist Dorothea Cook, in the duo Silken Rags. Their CD of original works was described by the Seattle Times as "a lovely and inventive disc of genre-bending compositions... rhythmically complex, harmonically rich music with influences extending from gospel and Caribbean to samba and tango." He was a pioneer in teaching university courses in popular music, and was one of the founding members of the U.S. Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, editing its newsletter RPM from 1984 to 1989 and its Journal of Popular Music Studies from 1992 to 1995.

Peter K. Winkler (born 1943, Los Angeles, California) is an American composer and a musicologist specializing in the theory of popular music. His compositions include both concert works and music for the theater; many of his works involve a synthesis of popular and classical styles.