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"Today we’d like to introduce you to an Oregon composer who’s a little off the–well, he’s not so much off the beaten path as he is on a different beaten path. Where most contemporary composers work in a distinctly contemporary idiom, a soundworld where Stravinsky is considered old hat and socially relevant post-tonal aleatoric graphic scores are all the rage, Andrew Lewinter composes music inspired mainly by Brahms, Bach, and the other “Dead White European Males” that fell out of fashion around the time of the semi-apocryphal Le Sacre riot and–despite the best efforts of Bernstein and an army of eagerly conservative symphony directors–have never completely recovered.

We first heard about Lewinter upon the release of his album Music for Brass and Piano last year. He wasn’t exactly on our radar, but the players on the album are all Oregon Symphony pros–specifically the principals of the legendary OSO brass section (Jeffrey Work, Jeff Garza, Casey Jones, and JáTtik Clark) and that raised an eyebrow–so we looked him up. First result: Andrew Lewinter, Employment Attorney.

​“Employment attorney Andrew Lewinter fights for victims of employment discrimination, retaliation, whistleblowing, and sexual harassment in Eugene, Oregon. Mr. Lewinter advocates for employees in State and Federal courts. Mr. Lewinter also represents individual employees before State and Federal administrative agencies, such as the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). Mr. Lewinter has been an attorney for both public and private sector labor unions in a wide spectrum of fields.”

Um. Right guy? A little more digging: Andrew Lewinter, Composer. Same guy! Far out, man. It’s always fascinating knowing what composers do for a living. Philip Glass famously worked as a plumber, a cabbie, even had a moving company. Andy Akiho was a sushi chef. Charles Ives was an insurance executive. And so on.

Anyways, since “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” we sat and listened to the album–which turned out to be awesome.

Not too many composers do this sort of thing anymore. In the cathedral of Classical Music you get the canonical DWEMs–the Hallowed Three B’s (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms)–but not a lot of serious new music composed in the old style, perhaps slightly updated for modern ears (a chromatic mediant here, an overtone scale there), without the slightest trace of irony or “deconstruction.” Here is a composer, we thought, who really likes this stuff.

So we wrote to Mr. Lewinter and asked him the burning question: why write Romantic music in the 21st century?"

Andrew's latest work, his Trio for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, and Piano is now available via Sheet Music Plus.