Born in Cologne in 1966, Oliver Schneller studied musicology and political science in Bonn and after that composition with Lee Hyla at New England Conservatory (Boston) and Tristan Murail at Columbia University, taking a doctorate in 2002 with a dissertation on music and architecture. He then taught composition, computer
music and psycho-acoustics at Columbia as Murail’s assistant before returning to Europe, or more precisely France, where he worked as a "compositeur en recherche" at IRCAM – Centre Pompidou in Paris (2002–04).
Schneller’s music has been performed at international festivals in Europe, Asia and the United States by such leading ensembles as Ensemble Intercontemporain, musikFabrik, ensemble recherche, Court-Circuit, the Southwest German RSO, Avant!, Speculum musicae, ensemble mosaik and, during the Frankfurt 2000 series, Ensemble Modern. His works have been commissioned by and premièred at the Witten New Chamber Music Festival, Wien Modern, the Munich Biennale, MaerzMusik (Berlin), the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, Ars musica (Brussels), Tanglewood, Ultraschall, Musica Strasbourg, Agora (Paris), Musicacoustica (Bei jing), the International Computer Music Conference (Singapore) and Takefu (Japan).

Since 2004 Schneller has worked with visual artists and architects, including Alexander Polzin, Christoph Brech, Curtis Anderson and Iris Dupper. He has played saxophone with Tan Dun, Lukas Foss, Ned McGowan, Steve Drury and Bernhard Lang and was a member of such contrasting formations as the George Russell Big Band, the Tanglewood Symphony Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester under the baton of Seiji Ozawa. In 2006 Schneller joined forces with Jean-Luc Hervé and Thierry Blondeau to form the composer’s group “Biotop”. In 2008 he co-initiated the SinusTon Festival (Magdeburg) with Carsten Gerth. For his works Schneller has received numerous awards and distinctions, including a scholarship from the German Academy in Rome, Villa Massimo, the Paul Fromm Award (Harvard University), the Benjamin Britten Fellowship (Tanglewood), a scholarship from the Experimental Studio of Southwest German Radio, a Reid Hall Scholarship from Columbia University and a Composer’s Prize from the Ernst von Siemens Foundation for Music.