Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf

Prof. Oliver Schneller
Professor for Composition

One area of focus in Oliver Schneller's compositional work is the creation of new constellations of instruments, loudspeakers, live electronics and architectural space. Schneller's works have been performed by conductors such as Ilan Volkov, Jonathan Nott, Peter Rundel, Titus Engel, Stefan Asbury, Enno Poppe, Jonathan Stockhammer, Baldur Brönnimann and Pierrer-André Valade at international festivals in Europe, the US and Asia by, among others, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, musikFabrik, Ensemble modern, Ensemble Mosaik, Avanti!, Court-circuit, Ictus, and ensemble recherche.

World premieres have been given at Festival Présences Paris, Munich Biennale, Vienna Modern, March Music/Berlin Festival, the Witten New Chamber Music Days, IFNM Darmstadt, Ultrasound, Beijing Modern, Musica Strasbourg, and Agora Paris. He has been composer-in-residence at the ZKM Karlsruhe, GRM Paris, the SWR Experimentalstudio, and at the Takefu Festival in Japan. From 2002 to 2004, Schneller was a composer and carried out research at the Paris IRCAM.

His works have been performed by ensembles including the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Orchester National de France, the Daegu Philharmonic, the Essener Philharmoniker, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, and the Tanglewood Symphony Orchestra.

Schneller has received numerous awards for his work, including a fellowship at the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome, an award for young composers from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, a composition scholarship from the Berlin Senate, the Paul Fromm Award from Harvard University, a scholarship from the Villa Concordia in Bamberg, the Benjamin Britten Fellowship (Tanglewood), a fellowship from the Takefu Festival in Japan as well as artist scholarships from the ZKM Karlsruhe and the SWR Experimentalstudio in Freiburg. In 2014 he was a lecturer at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, in 2015 at the Beijing International Composition Workshop (BICW), and at the Soundscape Festival in Maccagno, Italy.

In Berlin he taught a Psychoacoustics and Acoustics for Composers seminar at the University of the Arts (UdK) and in 2004 curated the TRACING MIGRATIONS intercultural festival with young Arabic composers and musicians in collaboration with the IMC of UNESCO. He has written numerous publications on this topic including publications with Schott, the Contemporary Music Review, by Pfau publishers, and in the Lexikon Neue Musik (Metzler). His compositions have appeared on the Mode Records, Wergo, Hathut, Telos, Raumklang and CPO labels and are published by C.F. Peters.

From 2009 to 2010, Schneller was professor of composition at the Stuttgart University of Music, representing Prof. Marco Stroppa. From 2012 to 2015 he was professor of composition at the State Conservatory of Music in Hanover. Since 2015 he has been a professor at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where he is also the director of the Eastman Audio Research Studio [EARS]. He is a visiting professor at the Zhejiang Conservatory in China and held the Edgar Varèse visiting professorship from the DAAD at the Technical University of Berlin for the 2018/19 winter semester.

Born in Cologne in 1966, Oliver Schneller initially studied composition with Lee Hyla at the New England Conservatory in Boston and in 2002 completed a degree with Tristan Murail as a scholarship holder at Columbia University in New York. In the late 1990s, he headed the Electronic Music Studio at the City University of New York. As Murail's assistant, he taught composition, computer music and psychoacoustics at Columbia University.

He has gained important insight from encounters with Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, Salvatore Sciarrino, Jonathan Harvey and George Benjamin.