Department of Music Lecture: Carl Schimmel, Assistant Professor of Composition, Illinois State University

Biography:

Carl Schimmel is a composer based in Illinois and Iowa.  Praised by The New York Times as “vivid and dramatic,” his recent music is dense with literary and musical references, often humorous, and combines intensity of expression with a structural rigor which draws upon his mathematics background.  In infusing his music with extra-musical influences such as poetry, art, and even unusual words, he strives to construct nexuses of experience which reflect both the inner life of emotions and the outer physical world which shapes us and is shaped by us.

Winner of Columbia University’s Joseph Bearns Prize and the Lee Ettelson Award, Schimmel has received honors and awards from many organizations, including the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House, New Music USA, and ASCAP.  His works have been performed in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Merkin Hall in New York, Severance Hall in Cleveland, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, and at other venues throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.  He has received performances and commissions from the California EAR Unit, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Minnesota Orchestra, North/South Consonance, saxophonist Taimur Sullivan, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Lucy Shelton, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, and many others.

He received his Ph.D. in Music Composition from Duke University, where he studied with Sydney Hodkinson, Stephen Jaffe, Anthony Kelley, and Scott Lindroth, and he earned a Master's degree in composition from the Yale School of Music, where his teachers included Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, Evan Ziporyn, and Ned Rorem.  He was a student at the Aspen Music Festival (2003 Master Class with Christopher Rouse and Poul Ruders, private lessons with George Tsontakis in 1996), and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Jennifer Conner while attending CaseWestern Reserve University (B.A. Mathematics and Music).  He has taught at the Yale School of Music, Duke University, Northern Illinois University, and Grinnell College.  He is currently Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Theory at Illinois State University.

To learn more about his music, please visit http://www.carlschimmel.com.