Peter Aston studied at the Birmingham School of Music, specialising in composition and conducting, followed by doctoral studies at the University of York.  His subsequent career has been in music education, combined with work as a composer, conductor and musicologist.  He has held senior academic posts at the University of York and UEA, where he was Professor and Head of Music for twenty-four years and is now Professor Emeritus.

Peter Aston's published compositions include songs, instrumental chamber music, choral and orchestral works and a children's opera, but he is best known as a composer of church music, much of which is performed throughout the English-speaking world, is frequently broadcast on radio and television in the UK and elsewhere and is available on commercial CD recordings.  As a conductor he has worked with several of the leading British orchestras and with various international festival choirs.  He was conductor of the Aldeburgh Festival Singers for fourteen years from 1975.  He has also been permanent conductor of such groups as the Tudor Consort and the English Baroque Ensemble, both of which he founded, and principal conductor of the Sacramento Bach Festival Choir and Orchestra in California.  He appears as guest conductor at other festivals in Europe and America, and is frequently invited to conduct his own music at venues throughout the world.  He has directed many courses and workshops for composers in the UK and overseas.

Peter Aston is active internationally as a lecturer, speaking at universities, conferences and summer schools on a variety of musical topics.  He has published editions of works by composers from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, concentrating principally on Baroque music.  He has written extensively on seventeenth-century English music.  Other books include The Music of York Minster, Sound and Silence (with John Paynter) and Music Theory in Practice (with Julian Webb, three volumes).  He has received a number of honorary awards for his contribution to music education and his work as a church composer.