We recently connected with Theo Schmitt and have shared our conversation below.
Theo, thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.
I’ve always been involved in music bands, youth orchestras and amateur concert bands, so I’ve witnessed the amazing power of music to bring people together. Working with kids and amateurs was really a core experience for me. They gave so much energy and time to perform music together, simply because they love music. I feel sometimes I need to give them back that energy, to give them even more reason to love music. By composing music and conducting orchestras, I think I just try to facilitate the reunion between the creators, the performers and the listeners! I want to connect people with eachother. In other words, with my music, I like to create links between musicians and myself, between pictures and the audience, between reality and dreams.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m a composer and conductor from Switzerland based in Los Angeles. I’ve been composing as far as I can remember, which is a little odd coming from a non-musician family. But I stuck to my passion for music and I studied orchestra conducting in Switzerland and then moved to the US to study composition at UCLA and film scoring at UCLA.
I was lucky to find opportunities to conduct amateur orchestras in my home country when I was 16 years old only. It helped me to craft my skills, to learn a lot of repertoires and to grow as a human being. It also provided me the opportunity to compose for these orchestras and have a safe space to be creative.
But I’m addicted to challenges and hate the “comfort zone” so I decided to move to the other side of the world! Here in LA, I’ve deepened my musical knowledge and my composition tools, especially by blending electronic music to my orchestral writing. More importantly, I’ve met amazingly talented artists, cinematographers, choreographers and musicians with whom I’m working today. I write music every day and feel so lucky!
This year, I’ve co-founded a non-profit organisation with other composers with whome I share values and visions. It is called the Unprecedented Music Association (UMA) and its mission is to bring joy, beauty, and fresh experiences to audiences of Southern California through performances of new music. We seek to put on dynamic and innovative concerts that refresh and modernize the contemporary orchestral repertoire, free from the binds of genre. It is probably the most ambitious and meaningful project of my life so far, and I cannot wait to see it grow. I’ll put all my energy to make it bloom and I am very lucky to be supported by friends composers who are as passionate about it as me!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Courage :
To think that dreams are achievable. To go out of my comfort zone to allow me to grow. To have the will to do things I’ve never done before. To be confident that I have the tools and the resources to overcome the challenges in life.
Goodwill :
I’m a firm believer that if you do good around you, good things happen to you. Not that I necessarily believe in a superior power, but I’ve seen so many people trying to succeed by crushing people around them, and they usually end up alone and sad. On the contrary, I try to help the people around me, to create synergies and it makes the journey way more fun. And life has been so generous with me so far!
Patience:
This one is a hard one to get, especially in a world which spins very fast. I think the most successful people are the ones who stick to their dreams long enough to allow them to happen. I try to accept not everything occurs when I want it to, but opportunities have their special ways to pop up in my life unexpectedly. It’s a subtle balance between creating my own opportunities, letting doors open, and waiting confidently that good things will happen.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
How to keep faith in humankind with everything that is happening in the world. I try to think that all these challenges are fantastic opportunities for us to create a better society, to come together as a species. But I often feel overwhelmed by the feeling that we are pointless and doomed. To keep creating with that feeling is not easy, but on the other hand, I try to humbly bring a little bit of beauty and joy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theoschmitt.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoschmitt_composer/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheoSchmitt_composer
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
