Daniel Schreiner releases his debut album project, Unmoored, featuring fresh new perspectives on solo piano music by five groundbreaking living composers: Luciano Leite Barbosa, Brittany J. Green, Sato Matsui, Ramin Roshandel, and Nina Shekhar. Exploring beguiling nuances of pianistic color and resonance, experimental treatments of musical time and form, and expressive emotional extremes, this project asks: What does it mean to be “free” vs. “confined” in the post-pandemic world? What does it mean to express individuality or voice dissent in an environment of censorship and oppression? And how can we find solace and even a sense of agency in the midst of unpredictability and uncertainty?
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 51:56 | ||
| 01 | Oiseau lunaire | Oiseau lunaire | 5:25 |
| 02 | Three Short Dreams: I. Introvert, Expressive, Rubato; II. Senza misura, Ad libitum; III. Mantra | Three Short Dreams: I. Introvert, Expressive, Rubato; II. Senza misura, Ad libitum; III. Mantra | 9:06 |
| 03 | Chords II, III, and VIII (hommage à Joan Mitchell) | Chords II, III, and VIII (hommage à Joan Mitchell) | 12:08 |
| 04 | bluedream | bluedream | 8:24 |
| 05 | Vocalise | Vocalise | 10:48 |
| 06 | Oiseau solaire | Oiseau solaire | 6:05 |
Experimentally-minded pianist Daniel Schreiner releases his debut solo album, Unmoored which showcases six solo piano works by five groundbreaking living composers – Luciano Leite Barbosa, Brittany J. Green, Sato Matsui, Ramin Roshandel, and Nina Shekhar. Unmoored emphasizes the value of performer-composer collaboration in creating an ambitious, immersive artistic statement that is as sonically adventurous as it is thematically cohesive.
About the album’s title, Schreiner explains: “To be ‘unmoored’ is to be metaphorically adrift — uncertain, disoriented, or even lacking a firm grounding in reality: an apt term to encapsulate how it feels to be a human living through the current period in our collective history.” Aptly, Matsui’s companion pieces Oiseau lunaire and Oiseau solaire, which bookend Unmoored, were conceived during the heart of France’s government-mandated COVID-19 confinement (quarantine) in 2020. The desolate, icy counterpoint that opens Oiseau lunaire gives way to a jarringly chromatic, pathos-laden outburst before unraveling into the same numb quietude of its beginning, encapsulating the pandemic era’s particular combination of confusion and emotional whiplash.
The succeeding two tracks – Roshandel’s Three Short Dreams and Barbosa’s Chords II, III and VIII (hommage à Joan Mitchell) – represent the experimental high water mark of Unmoored: opaque, submerged in resonance, yet full of nuance and no shortage of bravado flourishes. Roshandel’s Dreams, charged with visceral, improvisatory gestures that span the piano’s full register, seem to emerge and disappear out of the darkness without transition, much like how we experience the transfer between one dream and the next. Likewise, the lush sonorities of Barbosa’s Chords seem governed by alternate conceptions of rhythm and motion, combining in much the same way that brushstrokes combine to form a painting (the piece is explicitly, if not directly, inspired by three paintings by the American Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell).
Green’s bluedream and Shekhar’s Vocalise bring us from the open ocean back to the harbor by dealing with questions of individual agency and expression. bluedream feels like a parley between the natural and the mechanical, the acoustic piano part hocketing uneasily with pointillistic electronics while trying to connect with the fixed media’s field recordings, taken by Green in her home state of North Carolina. In a related vein, Vocalise is a masterful modeling of the individual voice: starting at a sotto voce, the largely-monophonic cantabile voice builds to multiple shattering climaxes, almost getting drowned out by the surrounding noise, but staying strong and true to the end. According to Schreiner: “Both of these pieces, I believe, are empowering assertions of agency in a present-day environment that threatens the power of our personal voice from every angle.”
Unlike its counterpart, Unmoored’s closing track, Matsui’s Oiseau solaire, is charged with kinetic release, propelled perpetually forward with unbridled joy and exhilaration – as if to represent an apotheosis, a final reckoning on what it means to be free in an era of unpredictability and uncertainty.
The Unmoored official release party will be held at Manhattan’s MISE-EN_PLACE on September 12, 2026, featuring a live piano recital by Schreiner as well as an opening set by special guest Jamshid Jam (Persian setar and electronics duo including Unmoored composer Ramin Roshandel).
- Daniel Schreiner
Recorded at Oktaven Audio, Mt. Vernon, NY, November 2024 - May 2025
Recording engineer: Charles Mueller
Producers: Luciano Leite Barbosa, Sato Matsui, Charles Mueller, Ramin Roshandel, and Daniel Schreiner
Editing and mixing: Charles Mueller
|Mastering: Ryan Streber
Artistic makeup and photography : Michel El Ghoul
Front & back cover images: Michel El Ghoul
Design and layout: Daniel Schreiner
A musician, composer, and interdisciplinary artist of diverse interests, Daniel Schreiner is fashioning an eclectic career marked by experimentation, cross-genre exploration, and impassioned social engagement. As a piano soloist and chamber musician, Daniel has performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, and multiple other venues across the United States, France, and Italy. Daniel is a core member of InfraSound and Aqueeressence Duo (with Yoshi Weinberg, flutist), performs regularly with Contemporaneous, and has also worked with the illustrious composer Betsy Jolas, Alan Pierson of Alarm Will Sound, and the JACK Quartet, to name a few. In 2017, Daniel received a Master of Music in piano performance from Mannes College of Music in New York City, studying under Dr. Thomas Sauer. A recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship from the Fondation des États-Unis, Daniel spent the 2019-20 academic year in Paris, France, studying at La Schola Cantorum with Billy Eidi. Having also majored in Studio Art while attending Williams College, Daniel has been developing a series of large-scale paintings inspired by organic structures and growth patterns from nature, which double as graphic scores that can be interpreted by one or more musicians. He lives with his husband in Brooklyn, NY.
http://danielschreinermusic.comSato Matsui is a Japanese-born composer based in Paris whose music reflects a richly layered cultural perspective, drawing on traditional Japanese sonorities and her lifelong classical training in counterpoint, harmony, and orchestration. A recipient of the Charles Ives Award and a Fulbright Scholarship, Matsui has established an international presence with performances in major venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, the National Concert Hall, and the Petit Palais. Matsui holds a Doctorate in Composition from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Robert Beaser. She later continued her studies in Paris at the Schola Cantorum de Paris with Michel Merlet, a student of Olivier Messiaen. Alongside her creative work, she is actively engaged in musicological research and currently serves as Chief Editor of the complete songs of Erik Satie for Éditions Durand‑Salabert‑Eschig. Matsui lives in Paris with her husband and daughter, where she teaches at the Conservatoire Erik Satie in the 7th arrondissement.
Ramin Roshandel is a composer, setarist, and photographer. He lived in Iran until 2017, when he moved to the US. In his music, he explores the contrasts as well as the liminal spaces between Persian, modal, and pitch-centric music materials on the one hand, and non-pitch-centric, atonal, or non-modal ones on the other. Over the past few years, Ramin’s compositions have been performed by the University of Iowa’s Center for New Music Ensemble, Red Cedar Chamber Music, the JACK Quartet, and LIGAMENT, among others. He has also been featured in the International Computer Music Conference, Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), NYC Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit, and Summer Institute for Contemporary Music Practice (SICPP). His composition has been described by Josh Levine as “brutally Persian,” and his performance on the setar has been considered “masterful” by Huntley Dent of Fanfare Magazine. From 2025-26, Ramin taught composition and music technology courses at Augustana College (Rock Island) and Iowa State University.
Luciano Leite Barbosa (Brazil, 1982) is a composer working with computer-assisted composition techniques, web audio, and sound synthesis. His music draws inspiration from the visual arts, poetry and nature. He studied music composition with Joshua Fineberg at Boston University, where he received his doctorate in composition. Before arriving in the United States, he studied acoustic and electroacoustic composition with Marcos Lucas and Vania Dantas Leite at UNIRIO, in Brazil. His music has been performed in contemporary music concerts and festivals by ensembles such as the Nieuw Ensemble, Les Cris de Paris, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, TrioPolycordes, JACK Quartet, and Erämaa Trio. He was also a recipient of the Prêmio Funarte de Composição Clássica 2016 and 2019, from the Brazilian national arts foundation (Funarte). In 2017-18, Luciano attended the Cursus program at IRCAM and collaborated with the ISMM research team. He lives and works in Paris, France.
Brittany J. Green (she/her) is a North Carolina-based artist whose music facilitates intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses at the intersection of sound, video, movement, and text. Recent works engage sonification and black feminist theory as tools for sonic world-building, exploring the construction, displacement, and rupture of systems. Her artistic practice includes spoken and electronic performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, experiential projects, and acoustic and electroacoustic chamber and large ensemble works. Her music has been featured at Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, World Saxophone Congress, New York City Electronic Music Festival, the American Piano Awards, and performances at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Lincoln Center, the DiMenna Center, and Miller Theater. Recent collaborators include the New York Philharmonic, Lexington Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, Karen Slack, Rebekah Heller, and Alarm Will Sound. Brittany holds awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, and New Music USA. Brittany holds a Ph.D from Duke University.
Nina Shekhar explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works. Described as “tart and compelling” (New York Times) and an “orchestral supernova” (LA Times), her music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, The Crossing, and Alarm Will Sound. Her work has been featured by Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Kennedy Center, and Library of Congress. Current projects include performances by the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, and Grand Rapids Symphony. She is currently Composer-in-Residence of Young Concert Artists.
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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