Karl W. Schindler | composer
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Biography
 
   
 

Karl W. Schindler (b. 1969 in Dallas, TX) holds Composition degrees from the University of North Texas (B.M., M.M.), where he studied with Cindy McTee, Phil Winsor, and Larry Austin, and Arizona State University (D.M.A.), where he studied with Randall Shinn, Jody Rockmaker, James DeMars, Rodney Rogers, and Glenn Hackbarth. Dr. Schindler is the Director of the Music program at Phoenix College where he teaches Music Theory, Composition, History of Broadway Musicals, Electronic Music, and Computer-Based Sound Synthesis. He was previously a faculty associate at Arizona State University. In addition, he teaches composition and theory to several award-winning private students.

While primarily a composer of chamber works and intermedia pieces, Dr. Schindler has received numerous commissions from the Western Illinois University Theatre Department for music for their Mainstage productions, including Life is a Dream, The Tempest, Comedy of Errors, and The Shadow Box.

Schindler's primary focus is the exploration of the theatrical side of concert music. To this end, he has created intermedia pieces incorporating multiple slide projectors, lighting effects, and requiring a certain level of theatrics from the musicians involved. His first piece in this "multimedia cantata" genre, the enthusiastically received The War Poems, used five slide projectors with hundreds of World War I era photos, synchronized to his musical setting of poems by Siegfried Sassoon.

Dr. Schindler's most recent work in this genre is based on texts from Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology, entitled Ghost Voices: Songs from a Cemetery. This work premiered in April, 2005 at Arizona State University. The next intermedia piece Schindler is planning to composed will be a "cabaret-style concert performance" based on the life of composer Richard W. Knells.

Along the same lines of theatricality in concert music, Dr. Schindler created the Small Blue Dot Ensemble in 2004 for the purpose of performing such works, with their first performance in October of that year of MUSICIANS UNITE! A Night of Hanns Eisler Songs, arranged by Schindler. In addition, Schindler regularly performs with the Phoenix-based new music ensemble, Crossing 32nd Street.

Karl Schindler lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife, theatre director Anne Dean Schindler.


Download Karl Schindler's C.V. in pdf format