For over thirty years Peter Duchin has provided music for presidents, society galas, corporate events, and charity benefits - - from White House state dinners and inaugural balls, to college proms. A pianist, conductor, and composer, Peter Duchin and his band play for more than one hundred public and private parties and concerts each year. In addition, his various groups (without him at the helm) play another 600 dates a year, making his one of the most popular, prestigious, and sought-after orchestras in the country. Society functions represent only a small portion of the engagements Duchin plays each year, and he is as comfortable playing Top-40 tunes at college proms as he is entertaining swanky Palm Beach debutantes with sounds of the Big Band Era.

He was born in 1937 to Eddy Duchin and Newport socialite Marjorie Oelrichs. His mother died in child birth and he was raised by his parents' best friends, Governor and Mrs. Averell Harriman at their home in Manhattan and Arden, New York. After the war, when his father returned from overseas naval duty, he lived with his father, who had remarried, and his stepmother Chiquita, until his father's death in 1951. He was educated at Hotchkiss (1954) and Yale (1958), where he majored in music and French. He studied in Paris at the Ecole Normale de Musique and the Sorbonne. He then served in the United States Army for two years on active duty in Panama. Upon returning to civilian life he launched his professional career in 1962 when he appeared at the world famous Maisonette Room in the St. Regis Hotel, and was an overnight success. Since that time he has played in 48 states and 22 countries. He has appeared in five movies, countless television shows, made 26 albums, and recently released his autobiography for Random House.

Peter is married to Brooke Hayward, the celebrated author of "Haywire" and has three children by a previous marriage. He is an avid outdoorsman and fly-fisherman and is involved with many environmental groups.