Eric Schultz is an award-winning clarinetist based in New York City. He currently serves on the music faculty at Iona College, where he directs the Iona Ensemble. As a committed teaching artist, he also teaches for the Harmony Program, often referred to as the city’s adaptation of Venezuela’s El Sistema.
As a soloist, Schultz has won multiple grants and competitions, including the prestigious Rislov Foundation grant for excellence in classical music, awarded for his performance of Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, and the Mozarteum Salzburg Festival Competition for his performance of Bohuslav Martinů’s Sonatina. He has been invited to several international conferences, including the College Music Society’s conference in Vancouver and the International Clarinet Association conference in Ostend, Belgium, to perform and present lecture recitals. Schultz can also be heard performing Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto, the title track of Jazz in Clear Water: Ebony, released by the University of Wisconsin in 2015.
As an orchestral clarinetist, Schultz has performed in venues across North America and Europe with conductors such as Jens Georg Bachmann, Larry Rachleff, Bruno Weil, James Burton, Mischa Santora, and Henry Charles Smith. Additionally, he performed in the orchestra for Nice Work If You Can Get It, the Tony Award-winning Broadway Musical on National Tour, and has performed at many international festivals, including Mozarteum Salzburg, Prague Summer Nights, and AlpenKammerMusik.
As an advocate for new music, Schultz has commissioned and premiered the music of composers such as Chiayu Hsu and Larry Baker, in addition to his work with the Victory Players. As a writer, his research area includes contemporary performance technique and contemporary analysis, and his writing is featured regularly in The Clarinet Journal and the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors Journal.
Schultz completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in clarinet performance at Stony Brook University. His principal teachers include Alan Kay, Alexander Fiterstein, and Melissa Koprowski.