Composer Ray Shattenkirk draws his inspiration from the natural world and humankind's problematic place within it.
Born in Brooklyn in 1954, Shattenkirk is also an accomplished and active bassist (acoustic and electric), as well as a proficient pianist, flutist, guitarist, cellist, bass-baritone and conductor, with experience in a variety of idioms (symphony orchestra, marching bands, choirs, chamber choirs, jazz bands, lounge bands, garage bands, new music ensembles, etc).
Shattenkirk’s musical studies began with his singer/pianist father who was a 3rd generation NYC musician. His formal education began at Juilliard Prep, where he studied double bass with Homer Mensch and music theory with Robert Hoffstader. He received his B.M. (with honors) in music theory and composition and a B.A. in experimental psychology from the University of Florida in 1978. Shattenkirk pursued graduate studies first at the Yale School of Music, and then at Harvard. His doctoral thesis, The Raven Variations, was commissioned and premiered by the Santa Rosa Symphony. His composition teachers were Krzysztof Penderecki, John Corigliano, Jacob Druckman, John Harbison, Betsy Jolas, Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner, Donald Martino, and Andrew Imbrie.
Among the awards and prizes he has won for his compositions are a National Endowment for the Arts Composer Fellowship (1995-96); the Lakond Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, "for an established composer" (1994); a fellowship from the California Council for the Arts (1991); and Meet the Composer Awards in 1981, 1993, and 1995. He was a Composer Fellow at the 1978 American Dance Festival and a MacDowell Colony Fellow the following year. In 1982 he studied with Luciano Berio at the Tanglewood Festival on a Fromm Music Foundation Fellowship then subsequently continued his studies with maestro Berio in Florence with the assistance of a grant from the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund.
His earlier student work was honored with many distinctions, among them the BMI award; California Composers Competition; Jewish Music Commission Annual Competition; East and West Artists Composers Competition; Aspen Festival Composition Competition; Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Composers Competition; Stroud Festival Composition Competition; Delius Festival Composition Competition; "Gian Battista Viotti" Concorso Internazionale di Musica; and the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Composer Contest, as well as awards from the American Music Center. He received Harvard's George Arthur Knight Prize for his string quartet Cythara (1981) and Yale's John Day Jackson Prize for the clarinet work, Interpolations (1980).
Shattenkirk’s compositions have been commissioned by IBIS Chamber Music the New Mexico Symphony, the Long Island Philharmonic, Chamber Music America, and Collage, among others. Tatonka, premiered by Brady Allred and the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh with David Stock’s PNME, was broadcast on over 200 radio stations in Chorus America's "The First Art" series in the fall of 1995. Other performers of his music include the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Aspen Music Festival, and Paul Hillier's Theater of Voices.
In addition to early student teaching assignments at Yale and Harvard, Shattenkirk has taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the University of South Florida School of Music and Hope College, where he was also Composer-in-Residence.
