Composers

Andrew Schultz

AndrewSchultzAndrew Schultz was born in Australia in 1960. His teachers and mentors included George Crumb, David Lumsdaine and Luciano Berio and he studied at the Universities of Queensland, Pennsylvania and King’s College London. Schultz has been the recipient of various awards and prizes in Australia and overseas, including Australia Council Composer Fellowships, a Fulbright Award, a Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan Award, and the APRA Award for Classical Music.

His music covers a broad range of chamber, orchestral and vocal works and has been performed, recorded and broadcast by leading groups and musicians internationally. Over a fifteen-year period, Schultz has been especially engaged in a series of large-scale dramatic works several of which incorporate parts for indigenous singers.

His two operas (Black River and Going Into Shadows) have been presented live and on film. Black River (1988) was awarded the Australian National Composer Opera Award and, in its film version, the Grand-Prix, Opera Screen at Opera-Bastille, Paris. The three act opera Going Into Shadows (2000), commissioned by London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, was premiered in London and Australia in 2001.

Journey to Horseshoe Bend is a cantata that had its first performance in 2003 by the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House. It drew an extraordinary public response and critical plaudits and the work has been released on ABC Classics. Another large-scale work is a version of the Song of Songs. Scored for 18 voices the work was commissioned by ABC Radio and The Song Company for their twentieth birthday and had its first performance at the Sydney Opera House in 2004. Other works for The Song Company include Ekstasis (1990), Data est lux (1997) and Wildflower (2006) – all to sacred texts.

Schultz’s new Symphony Australia commissions, Once upon a time… (2006) and Endling (2007) have their respective premieres in Brisbane with The Queensland Orchestra/Mills and in Hobart with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Volmer in 2007. Other recent works include Sonatina for solo violin (2007) for Jennifer Pike at the Wigmore Hall, As for Dutch bass clarinetist Henri Bok (2006), Ash-Fire (2001) for the Teatro Lirico Sperimentale, Spoleto, Southern Ocean (1999) for the 50th Anniversary Intervarsity Choir and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, In Tempore Stellae (1998) for the Melbourne Chorale, Falling Man/Dancing Man (2005) for the Melbourne Symphony, and Quicksilver Serenade (2004), Diver’s Lament (1996) and The Devil’s Music (1992) for the Sydney Symphony. Current projects include works for Chamber Made Opera and Southern Cross Soloists.

Schultz has held posts and residencies in Europe and North America including as Head of Composition and Music Studies at the Guildhall School of Music (London), Hincks Fellow – Villa Montalvo Arts Centre (California), a visiting lecturer at the Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo) and Osaka School of Music (Japan), Artist in Residence – Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), and Visiting Fellow – Institute for Advanced Musical Studies, University of London. Since 2002 Schultz has been Professor of Composition and Dean of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong (Australia).

www.andrewschultz.net

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