Peter K. Winkler (born 1943, Los Angeles, California) is an American composer and a musicologist specializing in the theory of popular music.
in music at the University of California (1963), studying with David Lewin and Seymour Shifrin,[2] and an M.F.A.
[5] 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.
[6]" He was a pioneer in teaching university courses in popular music,[7] and was one of the founding members of the U.S.