My name is Evan Schafer. I am an independent (or "indie") musician with a strong grounding in traditional composition, but I like to think my material always has a unique and individual flair. I guarantee not being bored out of your gourd when turning on one of the records. I produce, mix, and engineer everything myself, and have done so since late 2005.
Evan Schafer is an independent musician from the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania. His creativity and innovation within the indie music world has created ripples and a stylistic edge never before heard in quite the way he shells out.
His unexpected and diverse compositions take many listens to discover the complex layers of sound, molded entirely within the small bedroom space he has utilized since 2007's Fluorescence - appropriately named "The Bedroom" on his records' liner notes. And, for the majority of the time, his recordings consist solely of himself playing various instruments, truly redefining the meaning of a one man band.
Since a young age, Evan was attracted to music in an aural sense, of course. But there was a deeper, almost theoretical process of listening, which presented itself in endlessly rewinding his mother's cassette tapes to replay tracks - or, more specifically, parts of tracks - by artists which interested him. From there, he began to slowly learn instruments on his own to recreate the sounds to which he loved to listen.
Evan's first instrument, the piano, was self-taught from age two when his father purchased a small beginner's Casio keyboard for his birthday. At the turn of the millennium, Evan received a young person's acoustic guitar from his grandmother, and also learned to play without any formal instruction. From there, he was taught the acoustic bass and flute in an academic setting, adding a more classical flair to his already widespread oeuvre.
Evan began writing serious compositions around 2005, when the band Bag of Tricks (BOT) was established. The compositions mostly consisted of Evan sitting for several hours each day and churning out about ten or so songs per week. This extremely prolific nature allowed him to recognize early on his adeptness at writing music and lyrics that were fully developed in a short amount of time. Bag of Tricks presented five full-length LPs in less than two years, thanks in whole to Evan's songwriting ability.
When BOT became an uninhabitable space to work within, Evan slowly pulled his way out, producing one final record under the Bag of Tricks name, Paper Bag, in 2006 - a record which, with the exception of one track, consisted singularly of Evan's soon-to-become-typical one man band setup. From there, BOT fell to the wayside and disappeared. Evan's solo career was already well on-track, creating a stream of albums from 2007-2010, including Maya, Morse Code, Avoid Eye Contact, In the Presence of the Pointless, and Alone in San Francisco.
Evan also began working extensively within the contemporary classical world around 2009, writing such compositions as his enigmatic String Quartet I, the lively Piano Quintet - consisting of an untraditional instrumentation that sparked controversy, his Bartok-esque Second Piano Sonata, unparalleled solo instrument pieces such as Speck from a Mind, and unchartered territory for traditional chamber music settings in pieces like Please, Thank You. He has also composed the film score for the upcoming drama "Something About Silas", the screenplay for which he also penned.
All in all, Evan has made clear many times that his goal when composing music is to surprise the listener ... in a good way. Within his singer/songwriter, contemporary classical and film score music alike are elements of rock, jazz, new age, folk and other genres. He works hard to create music that both he and an audience will enjoy listening to and thinking about many times over, regardless of whether that means stretching traditional boundaries to fit new molds. As Schafer has quoted, "I don't believe music is infinite, I just believe that there are millions of different ways to phrase one single idea and make it stick."
Evan has studied music composition and theory with Dr. Allyson Roberts, and at University of the Arts in Philadelphia with Evan Solot. He is currently pursuing his Bachelor's degree in English Literature at West Chester University.
Playing live is a time to improvise a bit, use what I have worked on and try it new and different ways to see if people respond to it. While my live act is a tad crusty from non-use in recent years, it is still a rewarding and underrated way to prove to yourself that you *can* love what you do.
The Beatles, Yes, Genesis, Shawn Colvin, Bon Iver, Thomas Newman, Tori Amos, Aqualung, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Claude Debussy, J.S. Bach, Miles Davis, Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett, Steely Dan
INSTRUMENTS:
- Yamaha PSR-225 keyboard
- Ibanez 6-string acoustic guitar
- J. Reynolds 6-string electric guitar
- Logic Pro Instruments
EQUIPMENT:
- Cambridge SoundWorks monitors
- Sony MDR-V250 headphones
- Alesis MultiMix 6 digital mixer (via USB)
- Electro-Voice PL5 Dynamic Omni-Directional Microphone
- Electro-Voice PL6 Dynamic Cardioid Microphone
- AKG D 330 BT Microphone
- M-Audio MIDI-to-USB
RECORDING & EDITING:
- MacBook Pro (2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Memory, 320 GB Hard Drive)
- Logic Pro
- Amadeus Pro
- Tascam Porta Ministudio 03 (for analogue recording/overdubs only)
