Eric Schultz

Eric Schultz is an international prize-winning artist equally in demand as a soloist, chamber musician, and interpreter of new music. From Carnegie Hall to Sala Sinfónica Pablo Casals and beyond, Schultz has performed with renowned artists such as Valerie Coleman and Joshua Bell. He can be seen on Netflix and heard on National Public Radio.

An uncompromising advocate for the music of our time whose unique voice on the clarinet has inspired many of today’s finest composers, Schultz is known for his liquid, soulful tone quality and singular abilities on the instrument, including an unrivaled five-octave range, limitless facility of technique and articulation, and improvisations that span many dialects. As founding clarinetist of the Victory Players new music ensemble, his performing has been featured extensively by NPR through syndication. The group’s most recent project, El Puerto Rico, features ten newly commissioned works and is available online through GBH/Classical Radio Boston and New England Public Media. Schultz has commissioned and/or premiered the music of noted composers such as Leila Adu-Gilmore (NYU), Jonathan Bailey Holland (Boston Conservatory), David Sanford (Mount Holyoke), Mary Watkins, Liliya Ugay (FSU), Chiayu Hsu, Tony Solitro (Bard), Johanny Navarro, Armando Bayolo (Peabody), Carlos Carrillo (Urbana-Champaign), Iván Enrique Rodríguez (ASCAP Leonard Bernstein), and many more. His debut solo album, Polyglot, is to be released this year and features several virtuosic new works dedicated to him.

As an artist-teacher, Schultz is known for his transformational masterclasses and encourages a project-based creative approach to music learning while advocating for living composers and expanding repertoire lists toward a more intentionally inclusive and relevant future model. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music at Coastal Carolina University, where he teaches studio clarinet, chamber music, and serves as the director of the new Edwards Center for Inclusive Excellence. As a founding faculty research fellow in the center, he coined the phrase and created The [Represent]atoire Project, a play on the words repertoire and representation. The project advocates for including a diversity of composers in collegiate music curricula by intensely focusing on living composers. Recent masterclasses include the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, Libre de Música de San Juan, CUNY, Clemson, Stony Brook University, and more. Schultz completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in clarinet performance at Stony Brook University. As a Buffet Crampon artist, he performs exclusively on Buffet Crampon clarinets.