Antoni Schonken is a South African art and film composer currently residing in Stellenbosch, lecturing in Composition, Orchestration, and Music Theory at Stellenbosch University while composing for Sein Media. His doctoral research, supervised by acclaimed composer Hans Roosenschoon, focused on developing a generalised theory of orchestration practice. He is a double recipient of the prestigious Harry Crossley Scholarship, as well as the SAMRO Overseas Scholarship for Composers. His works for instruments, voice, stage and film have won awards both locally and internationally.
Antoni’s compositions, which display elements of minimalism, impressionism and choral styles, have received critical acclaim. In reviews, his music is described as finely choreographed with a keen focus on developing vocal qualities within instrumental genres, while his rare compassion for landscape gives his musical idiom a deeply stirring authenticity.
Antoni has received commissions from ensembles including the Cape Town Philharmonic, Unheardof//Ensemble and Juliet Quartet, as well as JIMF, GrassRoots and Oxford Sinfonia Gaia. His collaborations with NATi, Woordfees, acclaimed director Marthinus Basson and world-renowned poet Antjie Krog have culminated in A Mass for the Universe, a large scale for choir, dancers, sign language and orchestra, which is regularly performed in South Africa and Europe.
While attending residencies and festivals in the USA, Antoni worked with composers Ken Ueno, Hannah Lash, David Ludwig, Mari Kimura and Pierre Jalbert, and in 2017 he attended residencies and presented guest lectures at institutions in Finland, Sweden, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Antoni was the first South African composer to be invited to attend the MacDowell Residency in New England USA.
In recent years Antoni shifted his creative focus to reflect on hate crime -- four recent works, 02:06, Liminal(ity), tobe:toknow, and Fate’s Given Chance have received critical acclaim at an international level, with performances in the USA and UK. His second string quartet, titled A 29-Year Old Security Guard (in memory of the Orlando shooting of 12 June 2016), was commissioned and premiéred by the Juliet Quartet, and has since been selected by the Kaleidoscope call-for-scores from nearly 3000 entries.
Antoni's film music now features on BBC Earth Canada, The Smithsonian Channel, Amazon Prime, DSTV & Showmax, M-Net, Apple TV, and Paramount Plus.
At MacDowell, Schonken worked on a set of compositions that explore the complexity in music and the emerging qualities of music and musicality in the free performance of simple pitch and rhythm material. His original soundtrack for Aurora received a silver medal at the NY International Film and Television Awards.
