Peter Stopschinski
Academy & Workshop Faculty
Peter Stopschinski’s career has been less of a trajectory and more a buzz across the Texas landscape. The oft-offensive musings and genre-barrage of his first band, Brown Whornet, made Stopschinski and his Austin gang local favorite in the mid-1990s, and not just because of their song titles (“The Pink and Fleshy Skull of Ian Moore,” “The Man with Five Asses”), but also their unpredictable live shows. While in the Whornet, he also began scoring silent films, and in 1999, joined forces with the equally prolific Graham Reynolds of the Golden Arm Trio. They became the Golden Hornet Project. Together, the pair traversed Austin’s classical and experimental scenes, with Stopschinski on keyboards and donning the hats of composer and bandleader. They’ve hosted more than two dozen concerts and produced five symphonies. 2007’s first proper solo album, Chamber Music, released on San Marcos label Pecan Crazy, continues in absurdist fashion, collecting a dozen of his pieces from the past eight years. He currently teaches music theory at the Austin Chamber Music Center. He keeps Austin weird, one composition at a time.
