Peter Wyllie Johnston is a composer, writer and performer, who studied the piano from childhood and sang for several years as a boy soprano with the Australian Opera. At the age of twelve he wrote his first composition and, two years later, composed the score for the short Australian film GIRL ON THE BOULEVARD starring Jill Goodall and featuring Norman Kaye. By 1990 he had written numerous songs, including commissioned works and two short pieces for theatre.

In the 1990s he published more than 200 articles as music writer for The Melburnian magazine, the Sunday Age, Opera Australasia and Soundscapes. Some years later he began to write the music and lyrics for his first musical, MOSES - THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM, which was later workshopped in London and in East Hampton, New York and produced in a concert of excerpts from the score at Kaufmann Concert Hall in Manhattan. In 2004 MOSES was produced in a sell-out production at the Ford Theatre, Geelong Performing Arts Centre.

During the 1990s he developed a secondary career as a pianist performing in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Honolulu, Washington DC, London and New York. In 2000 his cabaret OF THINGS AUSTRALIAN was produced for two seasons at the famous Firebird cabaret in New York. In 2002 he returned to Australia to take up the position of Guest Musical Director of the Barossa International Festival of Music and, in 2005, he performed FEWSTER AND KING, his tribute show to the two great pioneers of the Australian musical at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. He has recently written the script for the concert performance of SCENES FROM COLLIT'S INN to be produced in Melbourne by Jonathan Harvey and the Victorian Concert Orchestra on 25 March.

Peter studied music at the Victorian College of the Arts and the Canberra School of Music. He graduated in arts and law (University of Melbourne) and was awarded first class honours for his Master of Laws thesis at the Australian National University (1988). He is about to complete his PhD at the University of Melbourne entitled, Who’s Playing Our Song? The Development of the Australian Musical 1900-2000, an analysis of more than two hundred original Australian musicals.

In 19 April 2007 Peter will present Australian musicals 1900-2000 at the Victorian Arts Centre as part of their Spotlight series and, on 18 June, as part of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival he will present FROM GAWLER TO THE GAIETY: A TRIBUTE TO KENNETH DUFFIELD (another pioneer of the Australian musical) at the Lyrics Piano Bar, Adelaide Festival Centre.