Paul Scherer

Paul Scherer - Composer / pianist / producer / educator

Award-winning Composer Paul Scherer is a native of Wilmington, Delaware and has lived in Chicago for the past 25 years. He is a composer, jazz pianist, arranger and producer and has composed and produced several albums of original music under his own name and with Agnieszka Iwanska, a Polish-born jazz chanteuse.   He infuses his music with unique and occasionally surprising harmonic and melodic elements, all the while keeping it accessible to the average listener and well-trained performer.   He considers himself a melodist, ensuring his melodic lines and threads speak to the text (if applicable) and the overall theme of the material.   While he’s comfortable writing for most genres, his specialty is writing for the voice.  His works span the gamut, from large-scale choral/orchestra works to intimate French chansons.  

Paul’s jazz opera La Trout Lily was scheduled for three sold-out fully staged performances in 2023.   Unfortunately, when two cast members contracted COVID on opening day, the shows were cancelled.   The work will be re-staged in 2024. 

Paul’s most recent compositions include:

·       La Trout Lily, a chamber jazz opera about family, dementia, greed, and murder (premiere postponed to March 2024)

·       In Venice, a chamber opera in two acts about misplaced love, betrayal, and the lengths one will go to for inspiration

·       Film Score: In the Habit of Hiding.  Score for an eponymous silent film, premiered in May, 2023 as part of the Chicago Silent Film Festival

·       Capri, a two-act musical about the struggles of Italian immigrants in the 1950s, and what one will do for their family (premiered in concert in 2022 as winner of the 2021 Skyline Theater festival)

·       Kaddish, a setting of the traditional Hebrew/Aramaic prayer for chorus and orchestra (premiered 2015)

·       Hashkeiveinu for women’s chorus a cappella.  Premiere, November 2023 at the SCI concert series, Athens OH

·       Departure, a chamber work for clarinet, violin, cello and piano first performed by a Juilliard “Pierrot” quartet in early 2022

·       Femme Noire, a setting for chorus and orchestra of a poem by the first president of Senegal that depicts and honors the women of Africa (premiered 2017)

·       Sonata for Clarinet and Piano.  Premiere, April 2024

·       Film Score: Jewish Life in Europe before the Holocaust.  Score to accompany Spielberg’s Holocaust Film and Video archives. The film features home movies of Jews living in Europe just prior to WWII and been entered into the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

·       Les Temps de la Journée: French song-cycle setting for mezzo-soprano and piano depicting three times of the day: morning, noon and night (premiere, April 2024)

. Les Saisons: Four French art songs, each depicting a season of the year

Paul recently completed his tenure on the board of the Chicago Center for Music Education, where he is immediate past president.   He holds a B.M. in Music theory from the University of Delaware, an MM (ABD) in Music Theory and an MM in Music Technology from Indiana University.  He studies advanced composition with