Robert Schulz : Associate Artist
Robert Schulz is a guitarist and mandolinist living in Western Australia. At the age of nine he started to write small piano pieces, but began to compose in earnest in the late sixties and seventies, writing and arranging music for various student ensembles while an apprentice music teacher at the Fremantle Music School. It was here that he was introduced to the Guitar and Mandolin.
In 1970 Schulz attended a Young Composers' Seminar at the University of Western Australia.
He moved to London in 1973 and began to study towards his Licentiate Diploma in Piano Teaching at the Guildhall School of Music. While in London he composed the incidental music for a performance of Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle at Walthamstow Adult Education Centre, and wrote a piano sonata which was first performed at Australia House workshops for Australian musicians in London. After attaining his Licentiate in 1975, Schulz returned to Australia and in 1976 formed the Fremantle Mandolin Orchestra (now the Western Australian Mandolin Orchestra).
Schulz attended a conducting course with Peter Bandy at the Western Australian Academy of Performing arts in 1984.
As a composer devoted to the music of plucked strings, Robert Schulz has received commissions from the Melbourne Mandolin Orchestra (1981), Concordia Camerata (1986) and from FAME (1995, 2000). His music has been performed in Australia and overseas and has been recorded in Germany, Holland, Japan, Greece and Denmark.
Schulz's most recent musical activity was the May 2006 tour to Germany by the Australasian Mandolin Orchestra. As convener and conductor of the tour, Schulz presented a program of all Australian pieces, some commissioned especially.
He has written a Tutor for Mandolin and is drafting a Tutor for Classical Guitar. Schulz is also compiling the new ANZCA syllabus for Mandolin.
Biography provided by the composer — current to August 2006