Peter Stopschinski is a composer/performer living in Austin. He composed and performs the music in Rude Mech’s Not Every Mountain. He composed string arrangements for the recent album Candy Cigarettes by Leon III. He plays keyboards for Brownout and Money Chicha. He is a pianist at Ballet Austin. His new music is called Heavy Ballades and is slow AF. He composed the Massacre of Spring in 2015 while spending the summer making an intensive analysis of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
Regarding Peter‘s solo piano set on Saturday, September 26:
“I spent the summer of 2015 making a measure by measure analysis of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. As part of that process I ended up with a simplified piano reduction of the entire ballet. In the evenings I began to deconstruct the material from the ballet and wound up with several fun improvisations heavily influenced by Stravinsky. This slowly developed into my Massacre of Spring. I also created artwork as I was doing all this and wound up making the graphic novel Vacation With Stravinsky, a graphic companion to the music.”
Regarding Peter‘s ensemble set on Sunday, September 27:
“I started writing Heavy Ballads in 2022. These melodies came about through late night improvisation trying to avoid scrolling. Sometimes i would just sit and play the same chord over and over again or the same 4 measures on repeat just trying to avoid picking up my phone. Eventually I wound up with several detailed solo piano compositions. I recorded these in my studio and then began to arrange them for various instruments. I made string quartet arrangements, chamber orchestra, harp quintet, guitar etc. Eventually i began to get friends to record demos and now they exist as Heavy Ballads, some of my slowest, latest-night-est, pensive-est jams. Its ok to nod off. I have many times.”