festival SCREENINGS & FILM AWARDS
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Stuttgart International Animation Festival
New York Film & Television Awards Cannes Film Festival Filmapalooza BANG Film Awards SAFTA Awards KykNet Silver Screen Festival Mzansi Short Film Festival New Cinema Film Festival Rotterdam International Poetry Festival OSTIA International Film Festival Vesuvius International Film Festival NatureTrack Film Festival Yosemite International Film Festival Gran Paradiso Film Festival Nemzetközi Természetfilm Fesztivál Gödöllő |
International Wildlife Film Festival Rotterdam
CT International Animation Festival International Wildlife Film Festival Innsbruck Nature Film Festival Matsalu Loodusfilmide NaturVision Filmfestival Green Screen Film Festival 48H Film Festival Cape Town BAFTA Awards Ekotopfilm Film Festival Wildlife Conservation Film Festival L’Age d’Or International Arthouse Film Festival Sondrio Film Festival Natourale Film Festival Festival International du Film Ornithologique de Ménigoute Annecy Film Festival |
Reviews
"To be honest: I was completely overwhelmed. The remarkable soundscapes created by the brilliant composer Antoni Schonken were beyond anything that I have experienced so far. His music is distinctly contemporary, but also breathtakingly beautiful."
Antjie Krog, South African poet & writer
"No stone has been left unturned in his mission to create music that can genuinely move your heart just as much as your mind – and he’s achieved it in every way; Years Between Us is a seriously deep dive into the art & craft of modern day instrumentalism, complete with a classic & graceful approach that draws on the roots of what makes the genre mesmerizing with professional precision, purpose, passion, and stunning material that is every bit as bold as it is beautiful."
Sleepingbag Studios, Canada
"...an exceptionally gifted musician and one of South Africa's leading composers. I admire him for his immense creativity, but also for the meticulous sense of detail in his work."
Ben Schoeman (SA pianist and scholar)
"His musical narrative, which quotes western and traditional sound colours, is mesmerizing."
Robyn Sassen (Johannesburg International Mozart Festival)
"It is evident how much more choreographic his musical imagination has become, how much more attuned it’s gotten to space and its requirements. And also how much more pronounced is its wit!"
Musicuratum
"Schonken's music moved the audience to tears with its heavenly beauty."
Poetry International Festival Rotterdam
Review by Eleanora Castagne
Pinocchio (Original Soundtrack), 2024 – Antoni Schonken
"It’s not often that a composer delivers a score this referential, this theatrical, and somehow still this coherent. Pinocchio, in Antoni Schonken’s musical retelling, is no mere retread of Disney sentimentality or traditional theatre-pit fare. It’s a work saturated in memory, but never beholden to it. Each track seems to lean sideways into the listener’s past — borrowing familiar gestures, yes, but folding them into something stranger, cleverer, and, crucially, something that feels personal.
From the first track, “Curtains Open,” Schonken establishes his tonal intentions with restraint. There’s no bombast here, just a gentle tease of thematic material, as if the orchestra itself is peeking out from behind the proscenium. It’s delicate, uncertain — and exactly the kind of overture that lets us know this won’t be a straightforward journey.
Then “Welcome to Fusilli” barrels in with grotesque delight. It’s a jumbled marionette of a track, tipping its hat to Kurt Weill one moment, then to some forgotten Fellini score the next. The sound is theatrical, yes, but it’s also sly: accordion-esque textures and brassy swells play off against each other like unreliable narrators. That’s the thread running through much of the album — a kind of musical mischief, anchored by discipline.
There’s a hybrid orchestral sound at play here, and while live musicians are scarce (a reality of economics more than aesthetics), the sampled palette is handled with an almost obsessive musicality. Orchestration choices are smart and surprising, the mixing detailed and emotionally reactive. You don’t miss a live ensemble, because the illusion is carried with such precision and sincerity.
One of the standout tracks, “Dreams Collide,” slows everything down. It’s a sobering moment — not mournful, exactly, but exposed. The harmony hangs in midair. Strings sing without resolution. There’s a kind of Arvo Pärt economy here, yet it’s not minimalist; it’s emotionally articulate without ever raising its voice. In a show as inherently theatrical as Pinocchio, this sort of understatement takes guts.
But the restraint doesn’t last. “Stromboli’s Circus” hits like a slapstick nightmare — exuberant, garish, and utterly controlled. Schonken isn’t throwing paint at the wall here; he’s very deliberately smashing motifs together, creating a soundscape that both mocks and indulges in its own excess. The result is genuinely theatrical: disorienting but tight, messy but never unclear.
A track like “Strings” might easily get overlooked, but it deserves attention. It’s one of the album’s most conceptually rich moments — music about manipulation, literally and figuratively. Here, the puppet metaphor lands not through lyrics or dialogue but through harmony: restrained, uncomfortable, and just off-centre enough to unsettle. The sentimentality is withheld, and that makes it sting.
The same balance — irony and sentimentality — comes into sharpest relief in the final two tracks, “Lessons Learnt” and “Adieu.” These aren’t songs about redemption. They’re about accumulation. What’s been carried, what’s been transformed. You can hear how the musical language has bent through the course of the album — softened, darkened, become more cautious. It’s the kind of arc you only get when the composer is thinking not just scene to scene, but across a whole theatrical architecture.
And that’s what really stands out here: the thinking. The score was written for a real production, and you can feel it. This isn’t an album of disconnected cues. It’s a dramaturgical map. Schonken doesn’t just write music to underscore. He writes it to intervene — to argue with the text, to complicate characters, to tease the audience into different emotional positions. There are leitmotifs, yes, but they’re buried under stylistic choices — jazz kits for smirking seduction, lush strings for fragile hope, pipe organ for moral irony. No single idea is ever allowed to sit comfortably.
This is musical theatre as research — not in the institutional sense, but in the way artists use that word: exploration, collision, listening for what the story isn’t saying and writing toward that silence. It’s an extraordinary album. It knows when to show its hand, and when to play the long game. And it leaves you, appropriately, not with a bang, but with a strangely quiet kind of ache."
Antjie Krog, South African poet & writer
"No stone has been left unturned in his mission to create music that can genuinely move your heart just as much as your mind – and he’s achieved it in every way; Years Between Us is a seriously deep dive into the art & craft of modern day instrumentalism, complete with a classic & graceful approach that draws on the roots of what makes the genre mesmerizing with professional precision, purpose, passion, and stunning material that is every bit as bold as it is beautiful."
Sleepingbag Studios, Canada
"...an exceptionally gifted musician and one of South Africa's leading composers. I admire him for his immense creativity, but also for the meticulous sense of detail in his work."
Ben Schoeman (SA pianist and scholar)
"His musical narrative, which quotes western and traditional sound colours, is mesmerizing."
Robyn Sassen (Johannesburg International Mozart Festival)
"It is evident how much more choreographic his musical imagination has become, how much more attuned it’s gotten to space and its requirements. And also how much more pronounced is its wit!"
Musicuratum
"Schonken's music moved the audience to tears with its heavenly beauty."
Poetry International Festival Rotterdam
Review by Eleanora Castagne
Pinocchio (Original Soundtrack), 2024 – Antoni Schonken
"It’s not often that a composer delivers a score this referential, this theatrical, and somehow still this coherent. Pinocchio, in Antoni Schonken’s musical retelling, is no mere retread of Disney sentimentality or traditional theatre-pit fare. It’s a work saturated in memory, but never beholden to it. Each track seems to lean sideways into the listener’s past — borrowing familiar gestures, yes, but folding them into something stranger, cleverer, and, crucially, something that feels personal.
From the first track, “Curtains Open,” Schonken establishes his tonal intentions with restraint. There’s no bombast here, just a gentle tease of thematic material, as if the orchestra itself is peeking out from behind the proscenium. It’s delicate, uncertain — and exactly the kind of overture that lets us know this won’t be a straightforward journey.
Then “Welcome to Fusilli” barrels in with grotesque delight. It’s a jumbled marionette of a track, tipping its hat to Kurt Weill one moment, then to some forgotten Fellini score the next. The sound is theatrical, yes, but it’s also sly: accordion-esque textures and brassy swells play off against each other like unreliable narrators. That’s the thread running through much of the album — a kind of musical mischief, anchored by discipline.
There’s a hybrid orchestral sound at play here, and while live musicians are scarce (a reality of economics more than aesthetics), the sampled palette is handled with an almost obsessive musicality. Orchestration choices are smart and surprising, the mixing detailed and emotionally reactive. You don’t miss a live ensemble, because the illusion is carried with such precision and sincerity.
One of the standout tracks, “Dreams Collide,” slows everything down. It’s a sobering moment — not mournful, exactly, but exposed. The harmony hangs in midair. Strings sing without resolution. There’s a kind of Arvo Pärt economy here, yet it’s not minimalist; it’s emotionally articulate without ever raising its voice. In a show as inherently theatrical as Pinocchio, this sort of understatement takes guts.
But the restraint doesn’t last. “Stromboli’s Circus” hits like a slapstick nightmare — exuberant, garish, and utterly controlled. Schonken isn’t throwing paint at the wall here; he’s very deliberately smashing motifs together, creating a soundscape that both mocks and indulges in its own excess. The result is genuinely theatrical: disorienting but tight, messy but never unclear.
A track like “Strings” might easily get overlooked, but it deserves attention. It’s one of the album’s most conceptually rich moments — music about manipulation, literally and figuratively. Here, the puppet metaphor lands not through lyrics or dialogue but through harmony: restrained, uncomfortable, and just off-centre enough to unsettle. The sentimentality is withheld, and that makes it sting.
The same balance — irony and sentimentality — comes into sharpest relief in the final two tracks, “Lessons Learnt” and “Adieu.” These aren’t songs about redemption. They’re about accumulation. What’s been carried, what’s been transformed. You can hear how the musical language has bent through the course of the album — softened, darkened, become more cautious. It’s the kind of arc you only get when the composer is thinking not just scene to scene, but across a whole theatrical architecture.
And that’s what really stands out here: the thinking. The score was written for a real production, and you can feel it. This isn’t an album of disconnected cues. It’s a dramaturgical map. Schonken doesn’t just write music to underscore. He writes it to intervene — to argue with the text, to complicate characters, to tease the audience into different emotional positions. There are leitmotifs, yes, but they’re buried under stylistic choices — jazz kits for smirking seduction, lush strings for fragile hope, pipe organ for moral irony. No single idea is ever allowed to sit comfortably.
This is musical theatre as research — not in the institutional sense, but in the way artists use that word: exploration, collision, listening for what the story isn’t saying and writing toward that silence. It’s an extraordinary album. It knows when to show its hand, and when to play the long game. And it leaves you, appropriately, not with a bang, but with a strangely quiet kind of ache."
Academic | Publications
- Double recipient: Harry Crossley Foundation Research Scholarship
- SAMRO Foundation Overseas Scholarship
- HB Thom Scholarship
- International Journal of Contemporary Composition
- Hearing Landscapes Critically
- SELF, Glen Carlou Gallery.
Masterclasses | Prizes | Residencies
- New Composer's Prize: Ter nagedagtenis
- Landscapes in Music Prize: Aurora Australis
- Winner: SAMRO Overseas Scholarship competition
- Macdowell Colony Artist's Residency
- Atlantic Music Festival
- Resident Composer: SICFM
- Arteles Creative Center Residency
- Johannesburg International Mozart Festival
- Stellenbosch International Composers' Symposium
- Robert Fokkens (Cardiff), Kevin Volans (UK), Peter Klatzow (SA), Ken Ueno (Berkeley), Mari Kimura (Juilliard), David Ludwig (Curtis Institute), Pierre Jalbert (Rice).