Conference hall of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory

Oliver Schneller (b. 1966 in Cologne) grew up in Africa, Europe and Asia and studied in Germany and the USA. After completing a MA in political science and musicology at the University of Bonn he worked for the Goethe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal (1990-91) on a project to support and sustain local forms of traditional musical practice. In 1994 he moved to the USA, first studying composition at the New England Conservatory in Boston, then at Columbia University New York as a student of Tristan Murail, where he received his doctoral degree in composition (2002) with a thesis on music and space. At the City University of New York he developed and expanded the CUNY Computer Music Studio. From 2000-01 he lived in Paris as a participant of the cursus annuel de composition et d'informatique at IRCAM/Centre Pompidou. As an assistant to Tristan Murail he taught composition and computer music at Columbia, and organized the "Lachenmann in New York" Festival in 2001. Throughout his studies, masterclasses with Salvatore Sciarrino, Jonathan Harvey, Brian Ferneyhough, George Benjamin and Vinko Globokar provided important orientations.

Oliver Schneller's music has been performed at international festivals including Festival Agora Paris, Ars Musica Bruxelles, Musica Strasbourg, Festival Présences Paris, Maerzmusik Berlin, Witten Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Ultraschall, Tremplins Paris, Les Musiques Marseille, musique action Nancy, Wintermusic Berlin, Karnatic Lab Amsterdam, Alternativa Moscow, the International Computer Music Conferences(ICMC) in Singapore and Göteborg, Musicaaoustica Beijing, Indaba South Africa, Aspen, Tanglewood Music Festival, "Frankfurt 2000" and the "Millenium Stage Series" at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. His works have been performed by Ensemble modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, MusikFabrik, Ictus, Percussions de Strasbourg, Speculum Musicae, Court Circuit, Ensemble Mosaik, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Ensemble Courage, Antares, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. From 2002 to 2004 he was a compositeur en recherche at Ircam working on "Jardin des fleuves" a work for ensemble and live-electronic spatial processing →.

From 2006-07 Oliver Schneller was a fellow at the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome, in 2010 he was the recipient of a Composers Award from the Ernst-von-Siemens Music Foundation →. In 2011 he was a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.

His works are published by Edition C.F. Peters → and his music has been released on the Mode Records, Wergo, Hathut, Telos and CPO Labels. →

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 Music Center Orchestra as a soloist in Tan Dun's Red Forcast. He also worked with various jazz and improvisation ensembles in Cologne, Amsterdam, Boston and New York.

Oliver Schneller has taught seminars on music, acoustics, psychoacoustics at Cornell University, the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin, the Norwegian Theatre Academy, and Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo. He has a continued interest in all aspects of interculturality in music. In 2004 he was the artistic director of the "Tracing Migrations" Festival →, featuring the works of contemporary composers from Arab countries. In 2005 he was the curator of a project on Eastern and Western concepts of musical beauty at Berlin's House of World Cultures involving composers Toshio Hosokawa and Helmut Lachenmann, as well as a guest lecturer at the GLOBAL INTERPLAY project of Musik der Jahrhunderte Stuttgart.

In 2009 he designed a 48-channel sound installation → as part of the exhibition TASWIR - Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, curated by Almut Bruckstein.
From 2009-10 Oliver Schneller held a professorship in composition at Stuttgart Conservatory of Music (sabbatical replacement position for Prof. Marco Stroppa). In 2013 he was a co-curator at Berlin's Maerzmusik Festival. →
From 2012-2015 he served as professor of composition and director of the Institute for Contemporary Music "Incontri" → at the Conservatory of Music in Hannover.
In 2015 he was appointed professor of composition and director of the Eastman Audio Research Studio (EARS) at the Eastman School of Music → in Rochester, where he lives with his wife, pianist Heather O'Donnell →, and daughter. For the Fall semester 2018/2019 Schneller holds the 'Edgar-Varèse-Guestprofessorship' at the Technical University Berlin. 
Starting in 2019, he will be professor of composition at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf

Composer's website

Photo by Manu Theobald

Mark Andre, born in Paris in 1964, creates musical-existential experiences for the listener characterised by subtle, minutely worked-out processes of transformation. Central to his work is the question of disappearance, which shapes his approach to sound, form, and subject. The practicing Protestant is a sensitive explorer of sound, both in his delicate and concentrated chamber works as well as in his orchestral and music theatre pieces. After his studies in France, including those at the Paris Conservatory with Claude Ballif and Gérard Grisey, Mark Andre found a new musical home in Germany. He describes his encounter with the music of Helmut Lachenmann, whose piano concerto score Ausklang he happened to stumble across, as having been a revelation. He subsequently went through extensive composition studies with Lachenmann in Stuttgart and studied musical electronics with André Richard at the experimental studio of Southwest German Radio, in the meantime shifting the focus of his life from France to Germany. Here, he soon received grants and prizes, such as the Kranichsteiner Music Prize at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (1996), first prize at the Stuttgart International Composers Competition (1997), and the composition prize from Frankfurt Opera (2001). Since 1998 he has taught regularly at the Darmstadt Summer Courses. In 2002 he received the Advancement Award from the Ernst von Siemens Music Founda-tion, and in 2005 he travelled to Berlin as a participant of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme, where he has lived ever since. Particular interest was aroused by the 2004 premiere of Mark Andre’s tripartite music theatre work …22, 13… at the Munich Biennale. This work’s title refers to a passage in the Apocalypse of St John. His orchestral triptych …auf…, which he completed in 2007, similarly references religious themes. Here, Mark Andre explored aspects of transition as relates to Christ’s Resurrection. Andre has a soft spot for German prepositions, grammatical elements with the function of transition, as illustrated in numerous other work titles such as those of the chamber music works written between 2001 and 2005: …durch…, …zu…, …in…, and …als…. Mark Andre’s first opera, wunderzaichen, under Sylvain Cambreling’s baton, became a highlight of the 2013/14 Stuttgart Opera season and was reprised there in 2018 in a revised version. One of Mark Andre’s most important works of the last few years is the clarinet concerto über written for Jörg Widmann and the SWR Symphony Orchestra, which won the Orchestral Prize at the Donaueschingen Festival. His collaboration with Jörg Widmann has led to two further works for solo clarinet: Atemwind 1 and the sound installation …selig sind…. The violin concerto an was premiered in 2016 at the ACHT Brücken festival in Cologne, followed by the work …hin…for harp and chamber orchestra in 2018. Another significant work of recent years is the Riss trilogy for ensemble, with individual parts written for the Ensemble Modern, the Ensemble Musikfabrik and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. In the previous season, Drei Stücke für Ensemble were performed by the Berliner Philharmonie and the Elbphilharmonie, commissioned by the Berlin Scharoun Ensemble. Mark Andre kicked off the 2019/20 season with the world premiere of iv 17 at the Lucerne Festival. The eight miniatures for soprano and piano were then reprised at Wien Modern and at the ECLAT Festival in Stuttgart. As composer in residence, he guested at the Klangspuren Schwaz in September: the festival, which opened with the Austrian premiere of his orchestral work woher… wohin, featured an arrray of performances featuring his compositions. Shortly afterward, Ensemble Modern interpreted the cycle Riss in a concert showcase at the Shanghai New Music Week. With iv15 himmelfahrt, interpreted by Martin Lücker, an organ work was featured in the Alte Oper Frankfurt’s programme in September, whose premiere in October 2018 in Munich in a working version featuring electronic stop action was received to great acclaim, and was then was performed in June 2019 for the first time with mechanical stop action by Leo van Doeselaar in Bad Frankenhausen. The 2020/21 season was supposed to start with a repeat performance of Drei Stücke für Ensemble at Dresden Philharmonie through the Scharoun Ensemble. The last piece of this cycle which was planned for 2021 will be premiered in 2022 at Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen by five of Hannover’s choirs and the Ensemble Modern. The season closes with the world premiere of a new work for harp and ensemble with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Mark Andre is a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, Saxon Academy of the Arts, and the Bavarian Academy of the Arts, and was honoured with the order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2011. In 2012 he was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. He teaches composition at the Academy of Music in Dresden.

Stream will be at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory YouTube-channel 

Photo by Martin Sigmund