CJ Schultz turns a home studio and a single digital piano into award-winning Fantasies, taking gold at two international competitions within the space of a week.
CJ Schultz is a Canadian pianist and composer who builds every track from a digital piano, connected straight into his laptop as a MIDI controller for his digital audio workstation. He shares his original compositions and classical performances with a growing audience on YouTube and Instagram, and has just landed back to back wins at two international competitions. CJ Schultz is now working with MN2S Label Services as he prepares his next release.
A Classical Foundation
CJ’s musical roots go back to middle school band in the late 1990s and piano lessons in the mid-2000s. From 2015 to 2021 he built on that foundation with intensive practice, often five to ten cumulative hours a day at the keyboard, work that shows in the technical depth of his original compositions, which he calls his Fantasies. Alongside those originals, spanning solo piano and piano with strings, he performs and shares classical repertoire by composers such as Chopin, all built from a digital piano into his DAW through virtual instruments and soundfonts, and posted for his audience on YouTube.
“Flight”: Gold at the Fenix Award
“Flight,” a multi-movement suite for piano, took the Gold Winner prize in the Composition category at the Fenix Award International Music Competition. CJ describes it as an impressionistic piece, open to interpretation, where visual ideas like the sky and the moon shape the harmony as it unfolds, soaring through what he calls a slightly turbulent eclipse. Its final movement closes with fugal writing, each new voice entering with a subject and countersubject, deliberately building toward a real sense of purpose and structure. The full result is listed on the Fenix Award winners page, and “Flight” is now streaming on Apple Music.
“Inductive Endeavour”: Triple Gold at Classical Stars
Days later, “Inductive Endeavour” earned three golds, Composition, 20th and 21st Century, and Own Composition, at the Classical Stars International Music Competition. Where “Flight” strings several related ideas into one arc, “Inductive Endeavour” is a single movement that stays in G minor throughout, built on a simple but dramatic harmonic motif that pushes toward an augmented dominant at each cadence. Its title is drawn from the idea of proving something infinite from a finite set of steps, the kind of structural discipline that runs through the full winners list alongside CJ’s name.
“I do think that I can do more in expressing ideas, through their melodic and harmonic development. So, I am really glad that I received the Gold rankings in each of Universal Maestro Society’s competitions and truly appreciate that they saw something worthwhile in the pieces that I entered. Still, while I am ahead of the Bronze and Silver ranks, I am also behind the Absolute Winners and Platinum ranks, so I want to take this as motivation to keep doing more.”
Sound and Style
CJ’s music sits at the meeting point of classical tradition and contemporary home production, grounded in real classical technique, from fugal counterpoint to sustained harmonic development, and shaped by an impressionistic instinct for letting an idea, visual or conceptual, guide the harmony. He’s grateful for both results without getting complacent about them, and sees the gold rankings as motivation to keep pushing his composition and performance further. Fans can catch performance videos on his YouTube channel and follow along on Instagram.
What’s Next: “Fleeting Sentiments”
CJ is already looking ahead to a new album, “Fleeting Sentiments,” a collection built from recordings of his own performances, both original works and outtakes of pieces by composers such as Chopin, rendered through his usual DAW workflow. It’s set for release on 28 September 2026, with preorders opening on 21 September. CJ Schultz is now working with MN2S Label Services as he prepares that next release, with distribution support to help his music reach a wider audience.