Niclas Schroeder
Composer | Arranger | Orchestrator
About Me
I am a media composer, arranger, and orchestrator who graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Music Composition in 2025.
I began my musical career as a classically trained percussionist and pianist. In my earlier years I started by transcribing and arranging music for ensembles that I was participating in, and eventually began composing more original works over time. I have since written original and arranged works for various different instruments and ensembles, and have had my works performed live several times. My musical style is heavily rooted in emotional and dramatic themes, often being programmatic in nature even without any accompanying media.
I am currently open for commission or hire, contact me here.
Latest Works
Senior Recital
Program Notes
The White Stag for Solo Cello (9:40-15:47)
The White Stag was originally written as a bassoon solo in my Fall semester this year and depicts the call of a lonely albino deer looking for another of its kind. Though the piece was originally written for bassoon, I realized that the melody would lend itself well to the unique sound of the cello just as well. With the help of my soloist Jeremiah, I was able to rewrite it in a way that best suited the cello.
Flowing Water (17:32-19:18)
Flowing Water was a piece I wrote for the CADRE club earlier this year and was a short and sweet piece written to represent the ebb and flow of water. Despite having written so much music for larger ensembles in the past, this was one of my first experiments with writing for just string quartet, and getting the sound I wanted out of just four instruments proved to be more difficult and fun than I had anticipated.
What Lies Below (20:43-22:50)
What Lies Below is a piece based on the concept of an immersive looped track for a video game. The lines that get introduced one by one through each instrument never change, just expand. The idea for this is that the music would be able to loop one section for as long as you were in an area, and then as you moved forward within the game, the soundtrack would evolve alongside your progression. In the interest of time, each loop only plays once in this live version.
The Smoke Clears (23:22-31:00)
The Smoke Clears is one of my older pieces that I wrote for the New Music Ensemble about two years ago. It depicts the story of a young soldier forced into a war, and in his first mission in combat is killed in battle. I felt it was fitting to return to this piece of music in light of the events that occurred since I wrote this piece for the first time, and I changed some elements around to focus more on the reflective side of things rather than the combat.
Whispering Winds (31:33-37:12)
Whispering Winds was my excuse to be able to play marimba in this concert. No, seriously! I felt it wouldn’t be a concert about my story as a composer if I didn’t feature some of my roots as an orchestral percussionist, and so this piece was loosely based on an earlier piece that I had written with my old high school percussion teacher. Of course, some extra flair was added with strings and piano, but the ideas I first had when writing with him still remain.
Dragonslayer Suite (37:46-46:48)
Last but not least, the Dragonslayer Suite is a piece that is part of a larger collection, some of which is currently being written for this semester’s New Music Ensemble concert. One of my favorite parts about being a composer is being able to incorporate different cultural elements from different regions into my music, and for this piece I leaned into the Celtic and Nordic aspects.