About Peter Muir
Peter Muir started his professional musical life age eight as a chorister in Westminster Abbey. He later enrolled at the Royal College of Music, London, studying piano with Yonty Solomon and composition with John Lambert. At the RCM he won numerous prizes and was the recipient of the Bliss and Leverhulme fellowships. Leaving the RCM, he pursued a dual career as an educator, becoming Director of Jazz and Head of Keyboards at Westminster School (one of the top schools academically in Britain) and as jazz pianist, performing in clubs and concert venues throughout the UK.
In 1990, his discovery of the work of John Diamond, M.D., the foremost authority in using music for health, was a transformative experience. He trained extensively with Dr. Diamond, applying the principles of his work to both his performing and teaching.
In 1997 he relocated to the US, studying for a musicology Ph.D. at City College of New York while continuing to perform and teach. For five years he was on the adjunct faculty of City University, New York as a lecturer in historical musicology. From 2000-2015, he became director of the Institute for Music Health, New York, a center teaching music with Dr. Diamond’s approach, and since 2008 has been on the guest faculty of the Graduate Institute in Bethany, CT (www.learn.edu) as lecturer in using music for healing.
His first book, Long Lost Blues: Popular Blues in America 1850-1920, was published to wide acclaim by University of Illinois Press in 2010. He is currently at work on a new book summarizing his unique approach to the teaching and making of music, and simultaneously a groundbreaking anthology of early published blues and proto-blues for the American Musicological Society.
Dr. Muir is active as a pianist and vocalist internationally, with a remarkable creative and technical mastery of wide range of classical and vernacular styles, from Bach to Jelly Roll Morton to the Beatles. He has performed at festivals and concerts across the US, Britain, Europe, and Australasia.
All his performance and educational work is empowered by the vision of using music as a transformative agent for personal, emotional and spiritual development. This he calls Whole Music®.