Oliver Schneller
From Sequenza21/NetNewMusic Wiki
for website: http://www.oliverschneller.net
Born in Cologne on March 26,1966 Oliver Schneller studied history, political science and musicology at the University of Bonn while pursuing private studies in composition with Friedhelm Aufenanger. From 1990-91 he worked for the Goethe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal on a project to support local music cultures. From 1994-96 he studied composition with Lee Hyla and Pozzi Escot at the New England Conservatory in Boston. In 1996 Schneller moved to New York where he was in charge of the Computer Music Studio at the Graduate Center of CUNY before beginning his doctoral studies with Tristan Murail at Columbia University which he completed in 2002. From 2000 to 2001 he lived in Paris as a participant of the cursus annuel de composition et d'informatique at IRCAM/Centre Pompidou. Masterclasses with Salvatore Sciarrino, Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, George Benjamin and Vinko Globokar provided important orientations.
The music of Oliver Schneller has been performed at international festivals including Agora Paris, Musica Strasbourg, Tremplins Paris, Les Musiques Marseille, Acanthes Avignon, ICMC 2002 Göteborg, ICMC 2003 Singapore, Maerzmusik Berlin, IFNM Darmstadt, Ars nova Rottenburg, Wintermusic Berlin, Alternativa Moscow, Indaba Grahamstown, Tanglewood Music Festival, Washington Square Chamber Series, Aspen, June in Buffalo, as well as at the "Frankfurt 2000" concerts of the Ensemble modern and the "Millenium Stage Series" at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
He has received commissions from the Tanglewood Music Center/Fromm Foundation, Radio France, MATA New York, and ensembles such as musikFabrik (Cologne), the Nouvel Ensemble Modern (Montréal), KNM Berlin, the CrossSound Music Festival Juneau the Antares Ensemble through the Meet The Composer/Arts Endowment program, and from Ircam to write a piece for the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the "Timée", a newly developed electroacoustic spatialization system.
His compositions have been performed by Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, musikFabrik, Speculum musicae, Ensemble Mosaik, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Ensemble Courage, the Whitman String Quartet, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Ohrwald, and have been broadcast on American (NPR, WQXR), British (VCH London), French (Radio France) and German (SWR, HR, NDR, SFB, Deutsche Welle) stations.
In 2001 he was a Visiting Composer at the Festival of Contemporary Music at Cincinnati College Conservatory and in 2002 a featured composer at Festival Résonances in Paris.
As a saxophonist Schneller has worked with musicians such as Lukas Foss, John Zorn, Steve Drury, John Harbison, Bernhard Lang and has been part of ensembles such as the George Russell Big Band, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Gustav Mahler Youth Symphony under Seiji Ozawa, and a soloist with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in Tan Dun's Red Forcast.
Oliver Schneller currently lives in Berlin where he teaches a seminar on "Acoustics and Psychoacoustics for Composers" at the University of the Arts (UdK). As the recipient of the 2006 Rome Prize, he will be a fellow in composition at the Deutsche Akademie Villa Massimo in Rome.
