Hannah Schneider is a talented, passionate, young woman from Washington DC.
I discovered her on Kickstarter.com campaigning for bucks to fund a trip to the Northern Caucasus to record local music with artists from the region. This is a region in Russia that consists of 7 different ethnic republics. They have their own languages and their own presidents, but they are all still included in the Russian Federation. Listen to ‘The Circassians of the North Caucasus’ and you will be whirled away to another time and place. The Olympics were recently held in Sochi, once the capital of the Circassians. Josef Stalin wiped out an entire people in the 1920’s and those who did not escape to other countries wound up either in the Gulags or six feet under. ‘A Chechen Folk Song’ from the Republic of Chechnia gives us all the flavors of the countryside and has one foot in the present and the other is the past. ‘Ossetian Legend’ is a song of North Ossetia, another land still under the Russian yoke.
Hannah plans to produce an album that will contain 12-20 tracks, depending on the amount of funding raised. It will include both traditional music and classical music in order to reach the broadest network of potential supporters for these young musicians. She mentioned that she is also in touch with a few composers from the region who are interested in composing original works. Hannah plays from the heart and her music is a roller coaster of passion and emotion.
In addition to making the album, Miss Hannah plans to share the recordings of these fantastic young artists online, on Carnegie Hall’s Musical Exchange and other online communities, to increase the artists’ visibility and to connect them with a larger global community of young artists.
She is taking the semester off of school and am devoting herself to this project full time, and will need to cover the expenses of making the album–such as studio time, mixing, making the CDs, basic backup recording equipment–as well as very basic living expenses and flights. That’s where Kickstarter.com comes into the picture. Recently, Hannah exceeded her funding goals and flew across the pond to make her dream a reality.
Hannah Schneider will have finished her music making expedition in June 2014! I cannot wait for the finished product.
While we wait for Miss Hannah, here is a virtual tour of the North Caucasus in both music and visual.
I do not know Hannah Schneider, but she makes me proud.
Go Hannah!
