Peter Rodgers Melnick (born July 24, 1958) is an American author and composer for film, television and musical theatre.
Some of Melnick’s earlier film score credits include L.A. Story, The Only Thrill, Convicts, and Farce of the Penguins. His television credits include the PBS's, Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood, Indictment: The McMartin Trial, Grand Avenue, and Lily Dale by Horton Foote.
His first produced musical was Adrift in Macao,[1] featuring script and lyrics by Christopher Durang. Melnick then collaborated with Bill Russell on The Last Smoker in America, a musical comedy about a dysfunctional family struggling with a new law forbidding smoking.[2] It opened in Columbus, Ohio in late 2010.
Melnick and Russell have also worked together on two musical one-acts, Patter for the Floating Lady, based on the eponymous Steve Martin, and A Bad Spell, adapted from a Virginia Moriconi short story Simple Arithmetic.
Melnick is the son of Daniel Melnick and Linda Rodgers, and grandson of Richard Rodgers and grew up in New York City. He graduated from The Choate School (which later merged with Rosemary Hall to become Choate Rosemary Hall) and attended Harvard College, Berklee College of Music, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.[3] He also studied jazz with the Jaki Byard.[4]
Melnick lives in Montecito, California, with wife, Talia Van-Son.
