Peter Nilsson

Peter Nilsson is the book writer, lyricist, and composer of Schooled, an original musical set at the intersection of American education and the culture wars. The show follows three students and their teachers as they navigate who they are, who they dream to be, and what they can and cannot learn in school. In March 2026, a staged reading of Act I was performed at SXSW EDU in Austin (NPS 67, n=96).

Nilsson studied music composition and English literature at Middlebury College, earned a master’s degree from Columbia University, and spent four years in New York City composing and performing across a range of genres — rock, jazz, bluegrass, funk, hip-hop, and off-Broadway theater — at venues including the Newport Folk Festival, The Bitter End, The Cutting Room, and Rockwood Music Hall. Among others, he accompanied Afro-Zouk legend Monique Seka, played with Nigerian reggae artist Ras Kimono at B.B. King’s Blues Club, and performed with Harlem Spiritual Ensemble founder François Clemmons. He also served as the house band keyboardist at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville in Negril, Jamaica. A multi-instrumentalist, his performing credits span more than seventy-five engagements.

He spent two decades in schools: fifteen years teaching English and serving in leadership roles at Deerfield Academy, followed by four years as Head of School at King’s Academy in Jordan, a coeducational boarding school founded by King Abdullah II serving students from over forty countries. It is this dual life — as both a working musician and a career educator — that makes Schooled possible. The show draws not only from research about schools but from lived experience inside them: in classrooms, in faculty meetings, in the daily work of teaching young people during a volatile cultural moment.

Nilsson is the co-author of Irreplaceable: How AI Changes Everything (and Nothing) in Teaching and Learning, a recipient of the Wolfram Innovator Award, and the editor of The Educator’s Notebook. The very first version of Schooled was a short, original, one-act performed by 25 teachers at a school meeting as a total surprise to the student body.