In His Quest to Make Composing Music More Approachable, Andrew Schneider Scores with New Record Release
Mar. 7, 2023
IT WAS SOME time last year when Houston pianist and composer Andrew Schneider found himself on a 5am Zoom call to Prague, listening to four extremely talented musicians (flute, oboe, clarinet, cello) recording two of his compositions inside a chapel for a then-forthcoming digital album release. “I was feeling like, ‘How does somebody like me who has so little profile get to work with those awesome people?’” says Schneider, who is considered to be pretty awesome himself by many in Houston’s classical-music community.
Those two compositions — “Les Exubérants” for clarinet and oboe and “Les Enchanteresses Dansantes” for the unusual combination of flute, clarinet and cello — are featured on PINNACLE VOL. 3, a new compilation of chamber music on Navona Records by Schneider and three other composers, Alla Elana Cohen, Dušan Bavdek, and Richard E. Brown. Now a Navona artist, he’s in good company; the independent label has released recordings by Houston artists Axiom Quartet and Duo Dramatique featuring compositions by local composers Karl Blench, Arthur Gottschalk and Erberk Eryilmaz.
Born in Houston, music came into Schneider’s life at age five. He started music lessons at age seven, and in addition to picking out melodies on a keyboard at home, he began listening to classical music while following scores. “I was always so excited whenever I looked at something interesting in a score and the recording would kind of validate what I had been hearing in my mind,” says Schneider, 32. Reading books in the school library about composers such as Mozart who also started young was inspiring. “I was like, well, why don’t I start doing that?” says Schneider.
The evocative French titles to Schneider’s two works on PINNACLE VOL. 3, which perfectly match the sound and spirit of the music, came to him after each piece had been written. “These pieces were written abstractly,” explains Schneider. “I just like coming up with enigmatic titles a la François Couperin.”
The trio came from a request for Schneider to compose a set of dances. If while listening to the piece you visualize a corresponding trio of dancers moving to the music, that’s just fine with him. “Seeing dancers is a good sign,” says Schneider, “and in some ways may be inevitable!” The piece is cyclical, in that the music throughout is developed organically from the same cells of melodic material. “I like to develop melodies from the inside outwards,” says Schneider. “You only need a little bit of a link with the previous section in order to make such a connection apparent, a particular interval that is easily recognizable.”
Schneider’s upcoming projects include accompanying violinist Dominika Dancewicz at Hobby Airport as part of its “Harmony in the Air” programming, and a gig as the rehearsal pianist for Opera in the Heights’s spring production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. On Mar. 23, the Texas New Music Ensemble will perform "Les Exubérants" as part of their spring concert at Archway Gallery. In conversation and in his role as a coach, Schneider is pleased to help demystify the art of composition, a craft that he found so compelling at such a young age. “I delight in making it a lot more approachable,” says Schneider, “and giving people some insight into what this process is.”
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Choreographer's Multimedia 'Extravaganza' at Blaffer Unites, Celebrates Different Art Forms and Identities
Mar. 7, 2023
'Twisting Through Secrets'
THIS SATURDAY AT the Blaffer Museum, Houston award-winning, queer contemporary choreographer and community leader Rivkah French presents Twisting Through Secrets, a cross-disciplinary, multimedia extravaganza featuring a variety of dance, drag, spoken word, and ukulele-playing performers.
Twisting Through Secrets takes its inspiration from two current Blaffer exhibits: Dallas-based painter Leslie Martinez’s new painting series The Secrecy of Water and video artist Jacolby Statterwhite’s 3D animated epic We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other. Beginning at 7pm, the Blaffer space will be activated by live music and dance theater from Angie Uhegwu (a.k.a. S.O.U.L.A.S.P.H.E.R.E); neo-futurist dance by French with Margo Smolik; spoken-word poetry by Ayokunle Falomo; contemporary movement combined with martial arts, and breaking by Persi Mey and guests; and what is described as “a sickening blend of drag glamour, drama, and camp” by bearded beauty and OutSmart magazine fave drag emcee Blackberri.
Martinez’s large-scale, tactile paintings, which incorporate rocks, scraps, and recycled materials, speak to the artist’s trans, non-binary identity, as well as their childhood experiences traveling from the Rio Grande Valley of the South Texas-Mexico border to Dallas, and crossing one of most dangerous Customs and Border Patrol checkpoints in the United States. Satterwhite’s video transforms the artist’s dance movements — evoking ballroom culture and vogueing — through digital bodysuits into animated Black fembot forms and other avatars and concludes with a tribute by a cadre of fierce femme warriors to Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old ER technician murdered by Louisville Police in March 2020.
Preceding the Twisting Through Secrets performance are two community workshops. At 5pm, French leads a 30-minute meditation on the Blaffer exhibitions and performance themes. At 5:30, Mey leads a beginner-friendly, open-to-all “Weightshare Workshop” that will explore how to move (i.e. dance) as a group through queer-positive, non-gender specific partnering. Participants will learn how partnered dancers safely give and receive weight while remaining connected in performance. Visual artists are invited to bring drawing and painting supplies to either or both workshops and join in the creativity.
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