Emily Bookwalter


Scott Wollschleger

composer



Scott Wollschleger (b. 1980) is a composer who grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Mr. Wollschleger’s music has been performed in venues around the world with recent premieres in New York, Pittsburgh, Paris, Dublin, Toyko, and São Paulo.

Recent highlights include the release of his solo piano work, Music without Metaphor, recorded by pianist Ivan Ilić on a new album The Transcendentalist  released on Heresy Records. Mr. Ilić also published an in-depth interview with the composer.  Mr. Wollschleger’s new work White Wall, was performed by the Mivos quartet at the 2014 International Music Institute at Darmstadt and What is the Word, a recent Loadbang commission, was featured at The Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, California This past season also saw performances by Pittsburg New Music Ensemble, Loadbang, Mivos and Red Light New Music. 2015 commissions include writing new works for the the String Orchestra of Brooklyn,  Longleash and Transient Canvas featuring bassoonist Chris Watford. In 2016 he will write new works for Exceptet and New Thread Quartet. Mr. Wollschleger is also involved in number of ongoing artistic collaborations with pianist Karl Larson, pianist Yegor Shevtsov, violinist Josh Modney, and violist Anne Lanzilotti. Along with media artist Jesse Ricke he is co-developing a new musical style called Avant Soul. He also regularly performs with Graphic Ships.

Mr. Wollschleger’s music explores a wide variety of approaches written for traditional western classical instruments. His work is inspired by themes of emptiness, pleasure, intimacy, loneliness, and play. The music is guided by the composer’s acute sense of synesthesia resulting in a sound world which is immediately sensuous and ephemeral. The music seeks to ask questions about the discontinuous nature of human experience and how music can emotionally impact us in extreme ways.

Following lightly in the footsteps of the New York School, Mr. Wollschleger received his Masters of Music in composition from Manhattan School of Music in 2005, where he studied with Nils Vigeland who himself Morton Feldman called “the most brilliant student I ever had.” Mr. Wollschleger has received support from a variety of organizations including New Music USA, BMI and the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music. Mr. Wollschleger was a Co-Artistic Director of Red Light New Music, a 501c(3) non-profit organization dedicated to presenting and crafting contemporary music. He also works as an editor and publisher at Schott Music New York.

In addition to his musical ideas, Mr. Wollschleger frequently delves into the philosophical writings of Deleuze, Guattari, Nietzsche, and Brecht and maintains an ongoing collaboration with Deleuzian scholar Corry Shores. Their recently co-authored thesis, Rhythm without Time, was successfully presented at the London Graduate School’s academic conference, “Rhythm and Event,”.

Mr. Wollschleger’s work is published by Project Schott New York.