Terry Schlenker grew up in a farming family on the Great Plains of North Dakota, where an early fascination with the piano led him—somewhat improbably for a farm boy—to begin composing music at the age of twelve. Despite the limitations of a small rural community, he pursued a musical education and went on to study composition at the University of North Dakota and the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in composition.

Early in his compositional career, Schlenker focused primarily on piano, chamber, and orchestral works. In recent decades, his creative energy has been devoted largely to a cappella choral music. An active choral singer, he has performed with professional and professional-level ensembles including Ars Nova Singers, St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and Kantorei. Singing as a second bass, he frequently features the lower voices of the choir in his compositions. His choral works are widely performed and recorded and are published by numerous publishers. They have been broadcast regularly on National Public Radio and other classical stations, with features on programs such as Colorado Matters, Colorado Spotlight, Sacred Classics, Sing, Classical Discoveries, and Sound Currents. His music has also been performed at national and international events, including the conventions of Chorus America and the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), the International Festival of GALA Choruses, and the National Choral Festival.

For Schlenker, composition is not an esoteric intellectual exercise, but a means of articulating beauty, expressing his deepest self, and forging an emotional and spiritual connection for himself, and performers and listeners alike.

In parallel with his life as a composer, Schlenker has had a distinguished career as a scientist. An embryologist by profession, he is the founding embryologist and first laboratory director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine, one of the world’s most successful human in vitro fertilization programs. The organization has since expanded into a network of 19 clinics across North America known as CCRM-IVF. He continues to work part-time as a clinical embryologist and serves as an embryo and embryologist advocate and consultant in the field of embryology.