Peter Lea is an Associate Teaching Professor of Music Theory and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Music at the University of Missouri. In addition, he serves as the area coordinator for music theory and course coordinator of aural training and sight singing. He holds a PhD in Music Theory from the University of Western Ontario and a MM and BM in Piano Performance from Brandon University.

Dedicated to pedagogy, Lea has been recognized at the campus, regional, and national level for his teaching. At the University of Missouri, he won the 2021 Win Horner Award for Innovative Writing Intensive Teaching and the 2019 Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award for Undergraduate Teaching. He has presented on innovative teaching methods, such as using online whiteboards or theme-type line dancing in music theory classes, at regional and national conferences.

Lea’s research interests include music theory pedagogy, performance and analysis, and the music of George Crumb. The intersection of these interests is seen most clearly in a chapter coauthored with Julia Bentley titled “Perceiving Imaginative and Intellectual Oscillation in George Crumb’s Apparition,” in Routledge’s 20th- and 21st-Century Song Cycles: Analytical Pathways Toward Performance, which was edited by Gordon Sly and Michael Callahan. A forthcoming chapter, “Parody and Crumb’s Voices from the Heartland; or, Double Voices in Crumb’s American Songbook VII,” will be included in a Festschrift in memory of Michael J. Budds that will be published by the College Music Society in partnership with Routledge and edited by Judith Mabary.

“Parody and Crumb’s Voices from the Heartland; or, Double Voices in Crumb’s American Songbook VII.” In Legacies of Power in American Music: Essays in Honor of Michael J. Budds, edited by Judith Mabary. New York: Routledge (forthcoming).

Co-author with Julia Bentley. “Perceiving Imaginative and Intellectual Oscillation in George Crumb’s Apparition.” In 20th- and 21st-Century Song Cycles: Analytical Pathways Toward Performance, edited by Gordon Sly and Michael Callahan, 116–28. New York: Routledge, 2021. https://www.routledge.com/9780367220266.

“Functional Transformations and Octatonality in Selected Works by George Crumb.” University of Western Ontario. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. Paper 1893. http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1893.