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composerbiography: MichaelSchelle

Michael Schelle was raised in northern New Jersey and graduated from NHR High School where, as Captain of the track team, he held the all-state distance records in the javelin, shot put and hammer for three years running. Now, 30+ years running as Composer in Residence at Butler University, his music has been commissioned and / or performed by over 350 orchestras, symphonic bands and professional chamber ensembles across the US and abroad, including the Chicago Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the major orchestras of Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Louisville, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Cleveland, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Urban Elektra (Phoenix), ISIS (Dallas) and XTET (Los Angeles).  Recent international performances of his music have included Kammerorchester Basel (Switzerland), the St. Petersburg (Russia) Chamber Orchestra, the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra (Moscow), the Czestochowa Philharmonic (Poland), Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional (Costa Rica), the Koenig Ensemble of London, the Banff Centre (Canada), the Beijing Opera House,  CoMET (Tokyo), the Firenza New Music Festival (Italy), Zimbabwe, and the Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) Symphonic Wind Ensemble.  He has received composition grants and awards from over 30 prestigious arts organizations including the Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, American Symphony Orchestra League (NYC), National Band Association (2012 Revelli Composition Prize), the Barlow Foundation, New York State Arts Council, Great Lakes Arts Alliance, New England Arts Foundation, the Welsh Arts Council (Cardiff), the American Pianists Association and the Indiana Arts Commission, and has held extended composition residencies at dozens of leading American universities and new music festivals, Spoleto USA, Wolf Trap, the MacDowell Colony (NH), and in Poland, China and Japan, including the Kraków Academy of Music, Chopin University (Warsaw), Aichi University of the Arts and Nagoya Imperial University. For his alter ego, during the summers of 1998 – 2003, Schelle lived in Los Angeles, writing a film music book (The Score, published in 2000 by Silman-James Press, LA, and translated / published in Korea in 2013) - and working on the original scores for such Hollywood blockbusters as The Mummy, G Men from Hell and Bikini Prison.