PAUL TARO SCHMIDT

Paul is a musician based in Switzerland. Paul plays the cello, piano, bass guitar, and clarinet. None of them particularly well. He likes to walk through nature, though he doesn't do it much. 

Paul listens to all kinds of music. He dislikes Phillip Glass. Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker inspired him to compose for dancers. He hopes to learn how to dance as well.

He loves to write, though he prefers to arrange and play music with friends. Otherwise he’s having a drink at a bar. When he was younger he took lessons in harmony, counterpoint, and conducting at the Basel-Musik Akademie. He doesn't remember much of it.

From time to time he conducts new and (very) old music with various ensembles.

Paul finally completed his first degree. He studied composition under Mathias Steinauer, Olav Lervik, Till Löffler, and Kaspar Ewald, electro-acoustic composition under German Toro Perez, and Rama Gottfried, theory under Andreas Brenner, and Johannes Schild, conducting under Iwan Wassilevski, and dramaturgy under Stephan Teuwissen.

He wants his lifelong task to be to bridge the gap between serious music and music for entertainment. His dream is to unify styles where fragments of serious music and fragments of music for entertainment would not just be scattered about frivolously but would be the elements of a diverse musical reality.

Before studying music he kind of studied Physics, but he’s not sure if it counts.

He’s part of the band JODOQ.