Biography:

Thomas Schuttenhelm is an American composer and guitarist whose compositions exhibit an exquisite craft and richness of style and are celebrated by many leading artists in contemporary music. His compositions can be heard on numerous recordings and have been performed throughout the country and abroad by such artists as: the Adaskin String Trio; Tempo del Fuoco (Sarah Larsen, violin; and Nick Cutroneo, guitar), the Alturas Duo (Scott Hill, guitar; and Carlos Boltes, viola); classical guitarists: Eliot Fisk, Jason Vieaux, Frank Wallace, Yovianna Garcia, Daniel Hartington, Chris Ladd, Alex Walker, Daniel Salazar and the Hartford Festival Orchestra; pianist Paul Bisaccia, the Goldspiel-Provost Classical Guitar Duo, bassist Robert Black (Bang on A Can All-Stars), Volkan Orhon, the Connecticut Trio, and the Connecticut Yankee Chorale. His piano music was featured on the PBS (WGBY- Springfield, WGBH-Boston) special "The Great American Piano." He has performed electric guitar with the FIREWORKS Ensemble, a contemporary music ensemble; collaborated with the Wellspring Dance Company, a performance art company based in New York; toured with Purple Rock Productions, a diverse theater group, performing on guitar and balalaika; and was a composer-performer member of the Boston Public Works Contemporary Music Series held at Harvard University. In addition to composing for some of America’s top soloists and ensembles, he is an experienced performer and scholar. He has given lectures at Yale University (New Haven, CT), Cardiff University (Wales, UK), University of Newcastle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK), University of Sussex (UK), University of London (UK), and at the Mannheim Hochschule for Music. His publications include "The Selected Letters of Michael Tippett", published by Faber, and he is the contributing author to an edition on Fernando Sor. He has also authored numerous articles and reviews for the journal Soundboard. In addition, he has contributed to various BBC Radio programs. In 2007 he was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to the U.K. (London). In 2008 he was a British Music Studies fellow at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently completing a monograph for Cambridge University Press on 'Creative Development and Compositional Process in the Orchestral Music of Michael Tippett'. He is also a contributing author for the forthcoming Tippett Cambridge Companion (CUP), and will travel to Lille, France in September (2011) to deliver a paper for the international conference on Tracking the Creative Process in Music. He will soon release a recording of all the guitar music of Tom Johnson. He divides his time between Hartford, CT and Philadelphia, PA.