Peter Winkler

Peter Winkler is a composer, pianist and professor of music at Stony Brook University. His principal composition teacher was Earl Kim, with whom he studied at Princeton and Harvard Universities. While a graduate student in the mid-1960’s he was fatally seduced by the music of the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Motown, and began a life-long creative and scholarly involvement with popular music. His compositions include both concert works and music for the theater; many of his pieces involve a synthesis of popular and classical styles. Winkler's music has been recorded on Advance, Bridge, New World, and Nutmeg records. As a pianist, he appears with Rhoda Levine's opera improvisation group, Play It By Ear, and with violinist Dorothea Cook in the duo Silken Rags.