Dr. Michael Schelle,
composer-in-residence, music theory, composition

Michael Schelle's works have been commissioned and performed by many major orchestras including the Detroit Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the major orchestras of Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Louisville, Cleveland, Chicago (Grant Park Symphony Summer Series), Birmingham, Indianapolis, Springfield (MA), Dayton, Albany, Albuquerque, Arkansas, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Greenwich (CT) Orchestra and Chorus. Other performances include the Western Wind Ensemble (Seattle), Syracuse Group for New Music (Merkin Hall, NYC), the ISIS (Dallas), XTET (Los Angeles), Voices of Change (TX), and Pittsburgh new music ensembles, numerous university symphonic bands/wind ensembles/chamber groups and many others.

Recent international performances of his works have included Kammerorchester Basel (Switzerland), the Czestochowa Philharmonic (Poland), the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional (Costa Rica), the Honolulu Symphony New Music Series, and the Koenig Ensemble of London. Conductors of his works have included Sir Neville Marriner, Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Keith Lockhart, Julius Hegyi, William McGlaughlin, Edvard Tchivzhel, Maxiamo Valdes, Tsung Yeh, Neal Gittleman, John Jeter, Paul Polivnick and Oleg Kovalenko.

Schelle has received composition grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation (New York City), the Welsh Arts Council (Cardiff), the International Percussive Arts Society, the American Pianists Association (the commissioned/required new etude for 12 semi-finalists, 1995), the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition (Utah), Arts Midwest, Indiana Arts Commission, the Mid-American Conference CBDNA, Great Lakes Arts Alliance, the Indiana State Orchestra Consortium (11 member orchestras), BMI and ASCAP. Composition awards include First Prize in the 1987 Inter-American Competition for New Orchestral Works (South America), First Prize in the 1985 "Music in the Mountains" National Competition for new orchestral works (NY), and twice a Pulitzer Prize nominee (1988, for Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra; and 1994 for Spirits). In 1989 he was named Distinguished Composer of the Year by the Music Teachers National Association and was the featured guest composer at the national conference in Wichita, Kansas.

Dr. Schelle is a frequent guest composer at colleges and new music festivals across the country, including recent extended residencies and/or "All-Schelle" concerts at Washington State University, Syracuse University, Capital University (Ohio), Bowdoin College (Maine), Sam Houston State University, the University of Massachusetts, Millikin University, University of Southern California, Kent State University and others. He has been composer in residence at the Spoleto USA Festival (Charleston, South Carolina), the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts (Virginia), the Center for New Music at Duquesne University and at the MacDowell Artists Colony (New Hampshire).

Born in Philadelphia and raised in the New York City suburb of Bergen County, New Jersey, his degrees are from Villanova University (theatre), Butler University, the Hartt School of Music/University of Hartford (Connecticut), and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. His teachers have included Arnold Franchetti, Dominick Argento and Aaron Copland. His works are published by MMB Music, Inc. (St. Louis), Indiana University Press, Moon of Hope Press (choral), and American Composers Edition/American Composers Alliance (NYC). During the past four summers, Schelle has lived in Los Angeles interviewing film composers and writing/"ghost-writing" film scores. His book The Score: Interviews with 18 Film Composers, commissioned by Silman-James Press (Los Angeles), was published in July 1999.

See this page for an in-depth profile of Michael Schelle.

E-mail: mschelle@butler.edu