Photos by Adel Rabinovich
Bio
Peyton Nelesen is a composer and pianist who was born outside of Chicago, Illinois, grew up in Atherton, California, and has also lived in New York City. She had the distinct honor of working with the Kronos Quartet for a year and composing a piece that was performed and premiered at their Kronos Festival – Celebrating KRONOS Five Decades! where long-time members John Sherba and Hank Dutt played their final shows and retired. She also joined Kronos on stage at Carnegie Hall to jam to Terry Riley’s “Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector”.
At age 11, she was the youngest winner of the 2019 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards. At age 12, she was an Honorable Mention recipient of the 2020 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. In 2022, Peyton received another ASCAP Herb Alpert Honorable Mention and in 2023 she was selected as a Luna Composition Lab Fellow. Her music has also won first place in the International Torrance Legacy Creativity Awards four years in a row.
Peyton is currently pursuing dual degrees in Music Composition and Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, studying composition under Alex Mincek. She began studying piano and composing music at the age of four. She studies music composition with John Syzygy, has studied classical piano with Penka Rodeva and jazz piano with the late Amonte Parsons who himself studied with Oscar Peterson. In addition to Kronos Quartet, Peyton has had the great fortune to have her music performed and recorded by amazing and unparalleled musicians such as Randy Emata, Brian Collier, Alex Csillag, Ron King, Ian Roller, Sean Erick, James Harrah, Lisa Liu, Ben Lash, Geoff Osika, Mike Cordone, Phil O’Conner, P. Blake Cooper, Ani Aznavoorian, Scott Worthington, Sean Rosati, Jordan Ferreira, Gene Coye, Max Gerl, Michael O’Neill, Phillip Whack, Josh Shpak, Patti Kilroy and Khristian Foreman.
Peyton hopes you will enjoy her music!