Given the amount of work they’ve done in all corners of Austin’s creative scene, Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski probably need no introduction, but let’s introduce them anyway: leaders of their own bands over the last decade (Golden Arm Trio and Brown Whörnet, respectively); composers for films, dances, theatre productions, and a plethora of musical ensembles; and performers who have recorded music together and separately. In February of this year, the two men, under the banner of their Golden Hornet Project, debuted their separate sixth symphonies in consecutive performances on the same program, which won the award for Outstanding Symphonic Performance from the Austin Critics Table. An online film journal recently named Reynolds’ score for Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly the best score of the decade, and I’ve Never Been So Happy, Stopschinski’s musical collaboration with the Rude Mechs and one of seven plays chosen for the inaugural National Endowment for the Arts New Play Development Program, will receive a staged reading at the Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater in Washington, D.C., in January.
Those are just the most recent developments in a friendship and working collaboration that has lasted more than 10 years. “The first time I played with Graham was at a party,” says Stopschinski. “I think it was at the Performance Arts Church that used to be at the Electric Lounge, a party with performances in every room. And in one room they had a piano and a bunch of percussion set up, and people were in there just jammin’. And I was playing the piano, and I looked over to my left, and Graham sat down next to me, and we kinda just jammed out together. We had never played together or anything like that. Our bands had probably played together, we probably knew of each other, but we weren’t friends. So our first conversation was actually at the piano.”
“We bonded over early 20th century Russian composers,” says Reynolds.
And now they’ve come full circle. In all their time together, they’ve never played for an audience with just two pianos. But they will, for one performance only, as the Golden Hornet Project presents Stopschinski and Reynolds at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar in a joint effort titled “Steinway to Hell.” “Which has the advantages of both ‘Highway to Hell’ and ‘Stairway to Heaven,'” says Reynolds. But there won’t be any AC/DC (probably) or any Led Zeppelin (probably). There will be Reynolds and Stopschinski, playing solos and duets of each other’s alt/indie/classical compositions, as well as some Journey, some Duke Ellington, and, of course, some Stravinsky. Get your tickets now, as this particular opportunity may not come around again for, oh, another 10 years.
The Golden Hornet Project presents “Steinway to Hell” Sunday, July 11, 7pm, at Pete’s Piano Bar, 421 E. Sixth. For more information, visit www.goldenhornetproject.org.
This article appears in July 9 • 2010.