Eric Schultheiss is creating

I am a composer, percussionist, and educator crafting hybrid electro-acoustic music where polyrhythm, orchestral color, acoustic songcraft, and modern electronics converge. Drawing rhythmic architecture from Stewart Copeland and Neil Peart, psychological and poetic depth from Peter Gabriel and e.e. cummings, and the long-arc storytelling of progressive rock, his work balances structural clarity, visceral momentum, and human consequence. I was raised in Southern California and trained at UC Irvine in percussion and composition. I blend classical rigor, jazz elasticity, progressive development, and cinematic texture into music that is intricate without losing its center. I use my pieces to turn ordinary life, memory, grief, faithfulness, and repair into rhythmically alive sound-worlds. As Head of Percussion Studies & Electro-Acoustic Composition at the Middle Tennessee Conservatory of Music, I teach a simple idea with radical implications: the DAW is not merely a production tool, but an instrument in its own right; AI expands the field of possibility, but earned musical judgment gives those possibilities consequence.