Oliver Schneller

Oliver Schneller  was born in Cologne, Germany in 1966, grew up in Europe, Africa and SouthEast Asia. He studied composition with Tristan Murail, at Columbia University in New York, where he completed his doctorate in Music Composition  in 2002  He obtained his Masters Degree in Composition with Lee Hyla at the New England Conservatory and additionally studied with Thea Musgrave and John Corigliano at the Graduate Center of City University New York. During his studies he received important impulses from Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, and George Benjamin.

The focus of Oliver Schneller’s compositional work lies in the creation of networks between musical instruments, architectural spaces, and live computer processing. From 2002-2004 he was “compositeur en recherche” at IRCAM working with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. He was a guest artist at ZKM Karlsruhe, at the Experimentalstudio des SWR Freiburg, and at the GRM Studios at Radio France.

Schneller is the recipient of the Fromm Prize of Harvard University, the Rome Prize of the German Academy Villa Massimo, the Siemens Förderpreis 2010, seven ASCAP Awards, and fellowships from the Siemens Music Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Columbia University and. He has held residencies at Ircam/Centre Pompidou, Technical University Berlin, UC Berkeley College of Music, Cincinnati Conservatory, Takefu Festival (Japan), Central Conservatory Beijing, ZKM Karlsruhe, and Experimentalstudio des SWR Freiburg.  

His works have been conducted by Ilan Volkov, Jonathan Nott, Stefan Asbury, Peter Rundel, Titus Engel, Jonathan Stockhammer, Enno Poppe, Baldur Brönnimann, Pierre-André Valade, among others, and were presented at numerous international music festivals including Donaueschingen Tage der Neuen Musik, Festival Présences Paris, Biennale Quatuor á cordes Paris, MATA New York, Tanglewood, Aspen, June in Buffalo, the “Millenium Stage Series" at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Festival Résonances, Festival Agora Paris, Wien Modern, Munich Biennale, Beijing Modern, Maerzmusik Berlin, Witten Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Ultraschall Berlin, Musica, IFNM Darmstadt, Musicacoustica Beijing, ICMC 2003 Singapore and Takefu New Horizons Festival (Japan). He has received commissions from radio stations in Germany, IRCAM, the Fromm Foundation, Radio France, Tanglewood, ZKM Karlsruhe, SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, Radio France and the Berliner Festspiele. His works have been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Recherche, musikFabrik, Avanti!, Ictus, Court-Circuit, Speculum musicae, Wet Ink, New York New Music Ensemble, Tanglewood Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Beijing Symphony Orchestra, Daegu Philharmonic Orchestra, SWR Radio Orchestra and others.

As a saxophonist, Schneller has performed with ensembles such as the George Russell Big Band, the Gustav Mahler Youth Symphony under Seiji Ozawa, and the Tanglewood Symphony Orchestra, as a soloist in Tan Dun's Red Forcast, under the direction of the composer.

Besides his work as a composer Oliver Schneller is actively involved in intercultural and cross-disciplinary projects. In 2004 he was the founder and artistic director of "Tracing Migrations", a music festival in Berlin, featuring the works of contemporary emerging composers from Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. In 2005 he curated a project on «East Asian and Western Concepts of Musical Beauty» at Berlin's House of World Cultures with guest composers Toshio Hosokawa and Helmut Lachenmann. In 2006 he was a lecturer and mentor for young composers from Cairo as part of the Global Interplay Project hosted by Musik der Jahrhunderte/SWR Stuttgart.  From 1990-91 he worked for the Goethe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal on a project intended to support and sustain indigenous music practices.  

His music has been released on Mode Records, Wergo, Hathut, Telos, Raumklang, and CPO, and is published by Edition Peters.

From 2009-10 Schneller held a professorship in composition at the Conservatory of Music in Stuttgart as sabbatical replacement for Prof. Marco Stroppa. From 2012-2015 he was a professor of composition at Hannover Conservatory of Music, where he was also the director of «Incontri – Institute for New Music». In 2014 he was on the faculty of the Darmstadt International Summer Course in Composition, in 2015 at the Beijing International Composition Workshop (BICW), and in 2021 at the Young Composers Academy in Chaikowsky City, Perm. From 2015-2019 he served as tenured professor of composition and director of the Eastman Audio and Research Studio (EARS) at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. Since 2019 he holds a professorship in composition at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he is also the founder and director of SoundCube RSH, a multichannel lab for experimental music scheduled to open in October 2024.

Website: https://www.oliverschneller.net