Scott Wheeler

Website:
www.scottwheeler.org

Scott Wheeler has received commissions and performances from the orchestras of Minnesota, Houston, Toledo and Indianapolis, as well as New York City Opera, sopranos Renée Fleming and Lauren Flanigan, baritone Sanford Sylvan, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Scott Wheeler’s opera Democracy: An American Comedy, on a libretto of Romulus Linney, was commissioned and premiered by the Washington National Opera. His first opera, The Construction of Boston, is available on the Naxos American Classics series. His chamber symphony City of Shadows was commissioned by Kent Nagano and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchestra Berlin and premiered by them on a portrait concert of the music of Scott Wheeler at the Kammermusiksaal of the Berlin Philharmonie. The New York premiere of this work is scheduled for May 2009 at Miller Theatre.

Scott Wheeler’s most recent commission is for an opera for the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theatre. Other current and recent commissions include the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, the Marilyn Horne Foundation, the ASCAP Foundation, Concert Artists Guild, Boston Cecilia, the Rivers School at Weston, and the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players.

As a conductor, Scott Wheeler has appeared with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchestra Berlin, the Chamber Ensemble of St. Luke’s in New York, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and Dinosaur Annex. His conducting can be heard on the Bridge, CRI, Capstone and Newport Classic labels. At Emerson College, Wheeler has also conducted productions of the musical theatre works of Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill, George Gerswhin, Stephen Sondheim and many others.

Scott Wheeler studied at Amherst College, New England Conservatory and Brandeis University; his principal teachers were Lewis Spratlan and Arthur Berger. He pursued further study at the Tanglewood Music Center (with Olivier Messiaen), the Dartington School (with Peter Maxwell Davies) and privately with Virgil Thomson. He teaches at Emerson College in Boston, where he co-directs the BFA program in musical theatre. He is a founding member of the new-music ensemble Dinosaur Annex.

Scott Wheeler has received awards and commissions from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Koussevitsky Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, the Barlow Foundation, Tanglewood, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artist Foundation, Yaddo, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the MacDowell Colony, as well as the Stoeger Prize for excellence in chamber music from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He was a Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin in 2007.

Scott Wheeler is a member of the Board of Directors of the Virgil Thomson Foundation and is Composer in Residence with Boston Cecilia.