Composer Max Pankau

, Chicago based composer Max Pankau, born in 1984, is the son of best-selling author Ed Pankau and artist Shel St Clair.  His professional music career began at 18 when he joined the US Army Band. Assigned to the 76th Army Band, in Mannheim, Germany, Pankau toured Europe playing private military functions and civilian concerts.  While there he gained performance experience in large ensemble and chamber music and was featured as a solo artist.  In the winter of 2005, he played at Belgium's national festival for the celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

In Europe he formed relationships with professional musicians and through them broadened and developed his musical taste.  Pankau studied horn under Andrew Joy, principle horn of WDR Sinfonieorchester, and Peter Arnold, an international soloist.   While he did compose in this period, his compositions did not yet have the clear direction of New Music and focused mostly on the blues and jazz.  Musical responsibilities were coupled with military-related duties and he was deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in January of 2006.  Pankau traveled throughout the Middle East with chamber ensembles performing for service members, ambassadors and politicians.  He also served as an armed guard in the Al-Faw palace in Baghdad.

He returned to Germany in December of 2006 and his Army contract expired six months later. In the fall of 2007 he began studying Horn Performance and Composition at DePaul University.  His Horn teachers included Oto Carillo and Jon Boen both whom he credits as a tremendous influence on him, both personally and professionally.  At DePaul, Pankau played principal horn in ensembles under Conductors Cliff Colnot and Michael Lewanski. 

Pankau added Music Composition as a second major and studied under Christopher Wendell Jones, Seung-ah Oh and Kurt Westerberg.  It was the influence of these teachers that solidified his vision of composition.  As a composer, Max has a wide spectrum of influences; he holds the music of Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino and Ken Gaburo in the highest regard.  His own experiment with “musique concrete instrumentale” can be heard in his recent composition, “Zueinander.”  Other composers and artists that he credits as being influential in forming his musical personality are the late film composer Henry Mancini, and 20th Century musical satirist Spike Jones.        

Pankau has written for numerous ensembles including the V3nto Brass Trio, IGO Independent Gamers Orchestra, in Chicago and is currently collaborating with mezzo-soprano Kate McDuffie on a new work for voice and bass trombone.  He also arranged music for the DePaul tuba studio under the direction of Floyd Cooley and his woodwind quintet, Aires Tropicales.  Max is currently a Master of Composition student at DePaul and he continues to gig as a professional horn player throughout the Chicago area.