Terry Schlenker grew up in a farming family on the great plains of North Dakota. He was fascinated by the piano and with music from a very early age, and oddly for a farm boy, was writing music by the age of 12. Somehow, he found a way to get a musical education in a small  rural farming community. He later studied music composition at the University of North Dakota and at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, where he received a Master of Arts degree in composition.

Early in his career as a composer, he wrote primarily piano, chamber, and orchestral music. In recent decades, most of his energy has been focused on writing a cappella choral music. As a choral singer, Schlenker has sung with the professional and professional level groups Ars Nova Singers, St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and Kantorei. As a second bass, Schlenker often features the lower voices of the choir in his compositions. His choral works are widely recorded and performed, and are published by a number of different publishers. His works have been regularly heard on the National Public Radio Network and other classical stations, where he has been featured on the programs of Colorado Matters, Colorado Spotlight, Sacred Classics, Sing, Classical Discoveries, and Sound Currents. His works have been performed at the national conventions of Chorus America and ACDA (The American Choral Director’s Association), at the International Festival of GALA Choruses, and at the National Choral Festival.  For Schlenker, to compose music is not to engage in an esoteric, intellectual exercise, but to articulate beauty, to express his deepest self, and to make a connection with the emotional and the spiritual, both for himself and for others.

An embryologist by profession, Schlenker is the founding embryologist and first laboratory director of one of the most successful human in-vitro fertilization programs in the world, the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine. This clinic has now expanded into a network of 19 clinics across North America called CCRM-IVF. He continues to work part-time for CCRM as a clinical embryologist, and functions as an embryo and embryologist advocate, and consultant in embryology.