Benno Schollum was born in Austria, and studied at the Vienna Musikhochschule with Josef Greindl and Roman Ortner, and with his father, the distinguished Austrian composer, Robert Schollum. Master classes followed with Sena Jurinac, Peter Elkus, Robert Tear, and Norman Bailey. In addition to an international career, he is deputy head of the vocal department of the University of Music in Vienna, where has taught since 1982, and has given regular master classes at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London, the Franz Schubert Institute, Marseille Conservatoire, and the Universities of Southern Mississippi and Charleston. Benno Schollum is - in co-operation with Dr. William Odom - author of the highly successful book ‘German for Singers', published in the United States and now in its second edition.

His repertoire encompasses a broad spectrum, from classic operetta to opera. His concert work ranges from the great Lieder cycles to oratorios such as Brahms' German Requiem, Britten's War Requiem, Mendelssohn's Elijah and Paulus, the great Masses of Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, Verdi's Requiem and Rossini's Stabat Mater, which he has performed as a regular guest at major European festivals such as the Vienna Klangbogen, Antibes, Bergen, Budapest, Carinthischer Sommer, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Schleswig-Holstein, Vilnius, Ljubljana and Rheingau.

Benno Schollum is well known for his championing of contemporary composers and unusual material. He sang the German première of Antal Dorati's ‘Herbst' with the Berlin Philharmonic, and the first performance of Augustyn Bloch's ‘Du sollst nicht töten' with the NDR Orchestra at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival.

Under conductors such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Yehudi Menuhin, Jesus Lopez Cobos, Zoltan Kocsis, Philippe Entremont, Adam Fischer, Günter Herbig, Stanislav Skrowacewski, Michel Swierczewski, Stefan Soltesz, David Stern and Antoni Wit, Benno Schollum has appeared with the San Francisco Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, the Hallé Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the English Symphony, the Vienna Symphony, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Madrid, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, among many others.

He has sung Elijah, the Brahms Requiem and Messiah in the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Viennese repertoire has taken him on tours to Japan, Indonesia, South America and South Africa, and notably to the Metropol Theatre in Berlin where he replaced René Kollo in the role of Danilo (Die Lustige Witwe). Numerous performances of ‘Pizarro' in Zagreb, and the roles of ‘Bauer' and ‘Sprecher' in Schönberg's ‘Gurrelieder' in the Budapest Spring Festival under Zoltan Kocsis brought critical acclaim, as did Lieder recitals in Germany, France and Poland (with Russell Ryan), Israel (with Philippe Entremont) and the United States (with Theresa Sanchez) .

He started into 2005 with concerts of Brahms' "Deutsches Requiem" under Mo. Vladimir Fedoseyev in Moscow, Torino and Parma, a recital for the president of Malta, as well as concerts and recitals in the US, among others at the Savannah Music Festival. Further highlights will be recitals in several European countries, various concerts singing the bass part of Beethoven's 9th Symphony and performances of Tchaikovsky's "Jolanta" at the Opera House of Lissabon and Lugano.

His discography includes Wilhelm Busch in Wort und Ton (Chansons by von K.A. Hueber), Schubert's Winterreise, accompanied by Graham Johnson, Ballads by Carl Loewe with Russel Ryan, Du sollst nicht töten with the NDR-Orchestra under Antoni Wit, as well as a series of recordings with Yehudi Menuhin: such as Beethoven's Symphonie no 9, Haendel's "Messiah", Haydn's "Creation" and three Masses by Schubert.
Tschaikovsky's Jolanta (Orchestra Tschaikowsky, Vladimir Fedoseyev) was released in 2003. A CD and DVD of Brahms' German Requiem with the Deutschen Requiems with the Tschaikowsky-Orchestra under Vladimir Fedoseyev is being produced.