Background
Breinholt grew up in Devon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where his father Robert H. Breinholt taught at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Breinholt grew up in Devon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where his father Robert H. Breinholt taught at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
University of Utah.
Peter taught himself to play piano, guitar, and drums growing up. Around the age of 11 he began writing and tracking his own songs. Later, as a college student at the University of Utah, Peter began performing at local coffee houses and restaurants.
The response was so positive that Peter was quickly pressed to track his compositions for release.
The resulting recording, "Songs About the Great Divide" caused a sensation in Utah, eventually being described by Salt Lake Magazine as "an underground classic on Utah college campuses". lieutenant became the best-selling, independently released Civil Defense ever in the state, almost entirely by word of mouth.
Groups like the marching band at Brigham Young University soon began playing the song "You Wear Flowers" on the football field at halftime, and local high school choirs doing their own arrangements of the song. Breinholt began selling out major concert halls in his home state of Utah and eventually in surrounding states.
Within a year of the album"s release Breinholt & Big Parade played nearly 100 shows and continued building their fan base.
lieutenant was during these concerts the expanded Big Parade road-tested many of the songs that later appeared on Breinholt"s second studio album, "Heartland". The underlying theme of that record is traveling Some of Breinholt"s best-known concerts have taken place at the 1,500-seat Eccles Amphitheater on the mountainside of Robert Redford"s Sundance Ski Resort in Provo Canyon, Utah. Breinholt"s live album, Live September, was recorded there over three sold-out nights days after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The album has become one of Breinholt"s most enduring recordings.
Peter"s songs have also been heard in Cable News Network stories, movie trailers, and feature-length films. His song "Lullaby" helped inspire Timothy Ballard, an Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent, to leave the Federal Bureau of Investigations and create Our Underground Railroad - a private organization dedicated to rescuing children who have been sold into sex slavery internationally.
As part of the effort, Peter recorded a new arrangement of his song (which had pervasively been released on his "Deep Summer" album) and gave it to Tim Ballard"s organization. In 2008, Breinholt wrote and performed six songs for the movie Everybody Wants to Be Italian (2007).
He also contributed two songs to the Digital Video Disc release of the Emmy-nominated Home Box Office documentary Resolved.
A song Breinholt wrote as a teenager is the current theme song for the nationally syndicated television show, BrideAccess.com. His music was also used in 1999 to launch computer company iOmega"s Hip Zip, a technological predecessor to the iPod. Breinholt has also produced albums for other artists, including "the YMAD album" which was released in August 2015.