Everything (Almost) is Illuminated: Bright Songs for Spring

 A² Andrew Kremer and Anastasia Royal will be playing mostly new original and some classical together to bring everyone out of hibernation!

Anastasia Royal was trained by Lili Simon (a pupil of Bartok) and Julian Levitan (of DePaul University).  Her healthy obsession with music began before she won classical piano competitions in her teens.   She then sang in a punk band and turned down a full four-year scholarship to music school.  Ah, youth…  While living in Germany in the '80's, she released an album as the lead singer of the New Wave band Originalton. For many years she wrote and performed one-woman shows and her original music in the Chicago area. She currently teaches piano at the Christopher Laughlin School of Music and is a member of Duo!—a North Shore piano group as well as the dynamic duo A2   

Andrew Kremer began playing guitar at the age of 12 under the instruction of Jim Konsbruck. Andrew holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from Columbia College Chicago.  During his time there, he studied composition with Philip Seward, orchestration with Ilya Levinson, and classical guitar with Norman Ruiz.  Andrew has also studied jazz guitar with Dave Saenger, Frank Protolese and Bill Boris.  Pursuing classical guitar further, Andrew participated in the International Festival de la Guitarra (2005) in Cordoba, Spain where he studied with Pepe Romero and Pavel Steidl.  Andrew won first prize in the Society of American Musicians collegiate classical guitar competition.  Following this, he gave a concert (2007) for the Chicago Classical Guitar Society featuring the music of Sor, Rodrigo, Barrios, and Guiliani.