Keyboard Artist: Andrew E. Simpson
[/responsive]Andrew Earle Simpson, Cantate Chamber Singers’ keyboard artist since 2007, is professor and chair of the Division of Theory and Composition at the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music of The Catholic University of America and a composer whose most recent projects reflect an interest in theatrical music and humanistic subjects.
Simpson’s chamber, opera, choral, vocal, and orchestral music have been performed across the United States and abroad. An active composer and performer of new scores for silent film, he is the House Film Accompanist for the Library of Congress Mount Pony Theater in Culpeper, Va., and performs frequently at the National Gallery of Art. Simpson also created and currently directs the Master of Music in Composition, Stage Music Emphasis program at Catholic University, an innovative program that teaches composers to write for the stage.
Simpson is the co-founder of the Snark Ensemble, an instrumental group devoted to creating and performing new scores for silent film whose music appears alongside that of Cantate Chamber Singers on the CD of Maurice Saylor’s The Hunting of the Snark. A Crown of Stars, Simpson’s visionary wedding oratorio commissioned by Cantate during his composing residency with the chorus, was recently released on the Albany Records label.