Scott Wollschleger

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, Vienna, Paris, Dublin, Toyko, and São Paulo.

Mr. Wollschleger stands out in the contemporary music community as a unique and independent thinker. His distinct music language explores themes of art in dystopia, the conceptualization of silence, synesthesia, and creative repetition in form. His music has been highly praised for its arresting timbres, conceptual originality, and challenging technical substance. Much of Mr. Wollschleger’s music features a sense of “timeless lyricism”, something that influential avant-garde jazz pianist and blogger Ethan Iverson described as “the highlight of the disc” in his enthusiastic review of Mr. Wollschleger’s Brontal No. 3, on Barbary Coast, a 2014 New Focus Records release.

In 2017 New Focus Records will release his debut solo album, Soft Aberration. Other 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. This past season also saw performances by String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Longleash and Transient Canvas featuring bassoonist Chris Watford. In 2016 he will write new works for Exceptet, New Thread Quartet, and Andy Kozar. Mr. Wollschleger’s recent work White Wall, was performed by the Mivos quartet at the 2014 International Music Institute at Darmstadt and his recent Loadbang commission, was featured at The Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, California. Mr. Wollschleger is also involved in number of ongoing artistic collaborations with pianist Karl Larson and violist Anne Lanzilotti.

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, New York Foundation for the Arts, 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, 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.