Yates, Peter (1909-1976) | University of Illinois Archives

Peter Yates (1909-1976) was a music critic, author, and educator. Yates was born in Toronto, Canada. His parents, who were US citizens, raised Yates in upstate New York. He was admitted to Ridley College and transferred to Princeton University, where he earned his bachelors degree in 1931. Yates moved to California to work for the Department of Employment in Los Angeles in 1937, where he would stay as an employment counselor until 1962.

In 1939 Peter and his wife, Frances Mullen, began a chamber music series in their home. Frances was a pianist and was interested in performing contemporary music by composers like Charles Ives, John Cage, and Lou Harrison. This program was initially called "Evenings on the Roof," but transformed in the mid-1950s into "Monday Evening Concerts" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Throughout the 1950s, Yates served as the music correspondent for the magazine Arts and Architecture. It was at this time that Yates met Harry Partch. Due to his expanding work as a critic and concert organizer he was appointed as the head of the music Department at Buffalo State College in 1968. Here he founded the Buffalo Evenings for New Music series, which was eventually led by Lukas Foss and included such performers and composers as Lou Harrison, Morton Feldman, and LeJaren Hiller. Yates died in Buffalo in 1976.

Biography for Peter Yates, UC San Diego Archives. Online at: https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0014.html.

See also Levine Paker, Renee. This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo. Oxford, 2010: 110-111.