Wayne Peterson

Composer Wayne Peterson wrote dissonant music in an idiom sometimes shaped by the jazz he played as a young man. He took piano lessons as a child, and the first music that interested him was jazz, which he began playing professionally at age 15, and jazz influences can be heard in some of his compositions. In 1960, Peterson began teaching at San Francisco State University, where he remained until 1991. He was a guest professor at Stanford University for several years after that. Peterson wrote some 80 compositions and was only moderately well known when he sent in his orchestral composition The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark for 1992 Pulitzer Prize consideration; the Pulitzer Prize board controversially awarded Peterson the prize. Peterson remained active into his late eighties. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project issued an all-Peterson album in 2017.