Dr. Peter Rothbart has been called a modern Renaissance man by his colleagues. He maintains an inhumanely active schedule as a composer, performer, writer, visual artist and teacher. He is the Professor and Director of Electroacoustic Studies at the Ithaca College School of Music in Ithaca, New York. In addition to his electroacoustic courses, he teaches courses in Scoring for Visual Media, Music and the Media, Exploring Musical New York and directs the IC Klezmorim.
With undergraduate performance degrees from the Eastman School of Music (BM in Saxophone) and University of Massachusetts (BA in Individual Concentration in Bassoon and Spirituality), and graduate degrees from Ithaca College (MM in Woodwinds) and the Cleveland Institute of Music (DMA in Composition), Dr. Rothbart is active as a composer in both the acoustic and electroacoustic worlds, with three Carnegie Hall premiers to his credit. He has written and orchestrated for the Utah Shakespearean Festival during their Tony Award-winning year and has written six film scores and composed incidental music for many theatrical productions. His classical works have been published by the Lorenz Corporation, Brixton Publications, Seesaw Music Publishers and the International Trumpet Guild.
He has authored over 300 published articles for Down Beat Magazine, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Ithaca Journal, the Ithaca Times and other magazines. His book entitled, Film and Music: The Synergy of Sight and Sound is published by Scarecrow Press. His visual artwork, based upon the magnetic patterns of sound on analog and digital media has been featured on magazine covers as well as in new media art shows in Europe and the United States. He served as the Editor of the Seamus Newsletter (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States) and as a contributing editor for Journal SEAMUS. He plays a mean but stylish bassoon and contrabassoon with the Binghamton Philharmonic and other regional orchestras and is in demand as an R&B sax player and woodwinds pit player. He admits to touring the US and Canada in the 1970s playing disco and funk and has the sequined tuxedo to prove it.