curriculum vitae

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BIOGRAPHY
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Dominique Schafer’s music has been performed in the US, Asia and Europe among others by the Arditti String Quartet, Dinosaur Annex Ensemble, Ensemble Fa, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Talea Ensemble, Frances Marie Uitti (cello solo using two bows), Alarm will Sound, the Callithumpian Consort, Orchestre National de Lorraine (France), E-Mex ensemble (Germany), Modern Art Sextet (Berlin), Jeremias Schwarzer, and the California EAR Unit, at festivals such as Musica Nova Finland and Festival Archipel Geneva. At Archipel Ashes in the Air II,for tenor recorder and electronics has been recently premiered, a work that is composed to be projected into an eight-channel surround space.The duo Triplex Unity for Saxophone and Percussion has just been released by the Yesaroun’ Duo on CD (available on itunes). He has been an active participant in the Acanthes summer courses in France several times. There he has been able to study electronic music within the atelier d'informatique musical (IRCAM) and went to the festival again in 2005 for the performance of his Chamber Orchestra piece Am Rande des Schattens. He has also participated in the composition courses led by Karlheinz Stockhausen in Kürten, Germany, and in the June in Buffalo Festival of 2007 where his music has been performed. In 2006 Dominique formally presented his work at the Darmstadt International Courses for New Music.

A native of Fribourg, Switzerland, Dominique Schafer spent a number of years in Los Angeles before coming to Boston. Next to his work written for acoustic ensembles and the concert stage, he has been writing increasingly for electronics and instruments with live processing. Composition study among others with Paul Reale, Mario Davidovsky, Bernard Rands, Chaya Czernowin, Magnus Lindberg, Ian Krouse, and Julian Anderson. At UCLA, where he received his Bachelor and a Masters of Arts degree in composition, he also participated in an intensive course of composition and conducting to picture with Jerry Goldsmith. Studies in electronic music with Hans Tutschku, and orchestration with Joshua Fineberg. Earlier studies in Jazz with Max Jendly. Most recently he has been studying with Brian Ferneyhough and Helmut Lachenmann.

Awards include the Adelbert Sprague Composition Award, George Arthur Knight Composition Prize, regional winner of the ASCAP/SCI commission competition twice in a row, and 2nd prize of the Kempten Orchesterverein composition competition in Germany. Dominique Schafer was also a finalist in the Queen Marie José International Composition Competition, the 33rd and 36th International Competition in Electroacoustic Music (Trivium) Bourges, France, and at the Fifth Seoul International Competition for Composers. He has received grants from the American Music Center. An advocate for teaching and communicating knowledge to young students, he has been a awarded three times the Certificate of Distinction in Teaching at Harvard. He recently completed his PhD studies there, and has been teaching music theory, keyboard harmony, ear-training and composition. He is also the co-artistic director of the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble.