Markus Schulz

Markus Schulz was born in Eschwege, Germany in 1975 and emigrated to the United States as a child, growing up in Florida. His DJ career began in early-90s American clubs, but it was his role as resident at New York's iconic Crobar in the early 2000s — and later at Spundae in Los Angeles — that established him as one of the most respected long-form set DJs in the world. In 2005 he founded Coldharbour Recordings, a label that has become an institution in progressive and uplifting trance, signing the likes of M.I.K.E. Push, Mike EFEX, Klauss Goulart, and dozens of others over nearly two decades. His own album catalogue — Without You Near (2005), Progression (2007), Do You Dream? (2010), Scream/Scream 2, Watch the World (2016) — explores progressive trance with cinematic ambition and a recurring interest in narrative concept albums. Schulz hosts Global DJ Broadcast, his weekly two-hour radio show, which began in 2002 and has been running continuously ever since — one of the longest-running shows in the genre. His "World Tour" yearly compilation series and "In Search of Sunrise" mix compilations (alongside other DJs) helped define the modern long-form trance set across the 2000s. He is widely regarded as one of the genre's great DJs in the literal sense of the term — someone who builds rooms and reads crowds with rare patience and intelligence. Live, Schulz is famous for his unbroken open-to-close sets — performances of six, eight, ten hours, sometimes more — that have become a signature offering. Few DJs in any genre have proved their durability as a craftsman over a longer period, and few have been more responsible for the legitimacy of progressive trance as a serious long-form art.