Andrew Schneider

A native of Houston, Andrew Schneider is a composer, pianist, and vocal coach whose virtuosic technique and daring interpretation has cemented his reputation among clients as a fearless musician. His extensive collaborative activity encompasses early music, standard operatic and art song repertoire, as well as contemporary music. Proficient for coaching purposes in French, German, Italian, and Latin, as well as adept with less frequently encountered languages, especially Slavic ones, Schneider enjoys using his considerable linguistic skill to help make challenging texts accessible to his clients. His wide ranging musical activities also include harpsichord and organ performance and conducting.

Schneider holds a B.Mus., summa cum laude, in music composition from Rice University, and in 2009, was a finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Competition. Choral works of his have been performed by the Piping Rock Singers and at the Denison University TUTTI Composition Festival. Recent composition highlights include the 2022 Houston premieres of his first comic opera, Happy Endings, with Lone Star Lyric Theatre Festival, and of his first string quartet by Zelda Presents.

Schneider has frequently played harpsichord continuo for various ensembles including Mercury Houston and period-instrument chamber ensemble La Speranza, as well as with the Lawson Ensemble in Jacksonville FL, and for performances of Handel’s Messiah and Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers under Cara Tasher. He has also played piano for several chamber and vocal performances with the Texas New Music Ensemble, including touring performances at SFA University, Nacogdoches. 

More recent performance highlights have included 2021 and 2022 concerts of Polish vocal, piano, and violin music sponsored by the Consulate of the Republic of Poland, Houston, and the 2022 kickoff concert of the French Cultures Festival sponsored by the Consulate of the French Republic, Houston.

In the field of opera, Schneider has served as music director for a production of Sweeney Todd and has coached Ariadne auf Naxos for the Kingwood Summer Opera. Schneider has also served as music director for Lone Star Lyric Theatre’s production of Victor Herbert’s Madeleine, and rehearsal pianist for the Houston Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s productions of A Topsy Turvy Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore. Other operas Schneider has coached include Rita, L’heure espagnole, L’italiana in Algeri, and La scala di seta and Zanetto for Operativo Houston, as well as Hansel and Gretel. For a 2016 Pittsburgh production, Schneider also coached the leading role in Die schweigsame Frau. Recently, Schneider has worked with HGOco, Houston Grand Opera’s community outreach initiative, to assist in coaching singers for performances of Kamala Sankaram’s Monkey and Francine in the City of Tigers, Mary Carol Warwick’s Cinderella in Spain, and Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love. 

In his spare moments, Schneider enjoys history, RexyPods, literature, linguistics, cartography, and mystery novels, all interests upon which he is apt to draw for his renowned store of indelible anecdotes.