Winter's multifaceted career has proved an ideal preparation for his new responsibilities. Beginning as a physics major at Brown University, Winter discovered a passion for music that led after only three years to his graduation as a music major with highest honors. Not wishing to be pigeonholed as either scholar or performer, Winter persuaded the Woodrow Wilson and Danforth Foundations to support dual graduate degrees (an M.F.A. in piano from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Ph. D. in the history & theory of music from the University of Chicago).
Winter joined the UCLA music faculty in 1974. Soon thereafter UCLA Extension invited him to begin a series of live music courses combining the latest scholarship with live performance- a model that Winter developed into several widely acclaimed nationally broadcast radio series for American Public Radio. Winter's speaking and performance venues include Avery Fischer Hall at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 92nd Street Y, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Smithsonian Institution, and nine seasons directing a sold-out summer concert series at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California. Simultaneously, Winter's scholarship has been widely acclaimed, including the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
In 1989 the Voyager Company invited Winter to author the first commercial interactive CD-ROM title. His programs on Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony", Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", Mozart's "Dissonant Quartet", and Dvorak's "New World Symphony" have been praised as multimedia milestones in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, U.S. News & World Report, Wired Magazine, MacWorld, and People Magazine.
Today Winter is a widely sought after spokesperson on issues concerning the digital world. His venues have included the Microsoft CD-ROM Conference, Digital World, the Japanese National Audio-Visual Conference in Tokyo, MacWorld Expos in the United States and Mexico, Milia in Cannes, Intermedia, the Ziff Institute, and the [California] Governor's Conference on the Arts & Technology.
