Drake Mabry Publishing - Composers biographies -

Catherine Schneider

Catherine Schneider studied piano at the Nice Conservatory (first prize in piano, chamber music, solfege, and sight-reading), St. Maur Conservatory (Prize of Excellence in piano and chamber music), and Curtis Institute of Music where she obtained her diploma in 1985. Her piano teachers have included Catherine Collard, Anne Queffelec, Vitalij Margulis, and Vladimir Sokoloff. In chamber music she has worked with Pierre and Nelly Pasquier, Paul Tortelier, and the Fine Arts Quartet.

Trained in the French, Russian, and American schools of piano playing, she has concentrated mainly on a career in chamber music performing worldwide in concert halls in Paris, New York, Moscow, and Belgrade. She has appeared on numerous French and American radio and television broadcasts. She has appeared with such artists as Henryk Szerng, Aaron Rosand, Bruno Pasquier, and Pierre-Yves Artaud.

Interested by contemporary music, she has premiered numerous works written especially for her and her own music is published by Editions Henry Lemoine and Editions Musicales Européennes, and Drake Mabry Publishing.

Since the 1990's she has focused on improvisation and composition and currently performs as pianist with Drake Mabry in the improvisation group Résonance Duo. She has been active in group theatrical improvisations with the Chesnaie.

As a professor she has taught piano, sight-reading, and solfege at conservatories in Paris, Suresnes, Guerande, and Poitiers, and has been coaching at the Paris Conservatory of Music. Additional teaching positions include Professor of piano at CEFEDEM (a national teacher training institute) in Poitiers and Professor of improvisation at universities in Sélestat and Rennes. She is frequently invited to give workshops on piano, improvisation, and piano pedagogy. She is currently Professor of piano at the Conservatory of Music in Angoulême.

Press Reviews

"A thousand and one ways to play the piano."

"As to Catherine Schneider, she demonstrates that the possible manners in which a musician can play the piano - the piano keys, but also the strings and frame - remains yet to be determined."

Julien Beneteau, la liberté de l'est