DANIELLE EVA SCHWOB
Composer/Performer/Producer/Curator

Danielle Eva Schwob represents a new-generation breed of composer-performer, one who crosses genres with impact and aplomb. The classically trained artist feels as at home composing bold, immersive instrumental music for concert halls and film scores as she does crafting art-pop recordings that brim with irresistible hooks. Danielle is also a music entrepreneur, gifted at curating programs, producing events and convening disparate talents – keen to create synergistic presentations whereby the visual enhances the aural. Originally from London but now based in New York City and Los Angeles, Danielle has been singled out as “a notable cross-genre composer” by The New Yorker, while NPR marveled over her pop-music project, DELANILA, saying of its debut release, Overloaded: “This album – wow. It really creates a world… a huge record.”

About her ability to move adroitly from one genre to the other in her work, Danielle says: “Music is a language. Composing a string quartet is different from producing a pop song, like speaking French is different from speaking English, but they are both languages, just as a string quartet and a pop song are both music. Lessons learned in one genre you can often apply to the other. You can invest pop music with a richness and complexity akin to classical music, just as you can create classical works that have an emotional directness like the best pop songs. Whether it’s classical music or a film score or a rock record, you want to communicate feeling to the audience. There may be different techniques to get there, but the destination is the same: emotion.”

Out of the Tunnel

Danielle’s debut album as a composer in the classical realm, Out of the Tunnel, will be released via the Innova Recordings label on August 13, 2021. Co-produced by Danielle, this artful collection – mixed by Ryan Streber and Grammy-winners Silas Brown and Marc Urselli – presents the first recordings of nine compositions, each as contemporary as it is alluring. With her father a classical guitarist, Danielle absorbed Bach and the Spanish repertoire, including flamenco, as if by osmosis; she would eventually be influenced by composers from Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel and Harry Partch to Arvo Pärt, David Lang and Steve Reich, the latter minimalist icon serving as her “gateway drug” into contemporary classical music. The cinematic sounds of Philip Glass and Jóhann Jóhannsson have also been key influences.

The chamber music Danielle has composed is often inspired by nature and other art, such as painting. On Out of the Tunnel, there is a striking triptych for solo violin, solo cello and solo piano (commissioned by the American Composers Forum): “Reflections on Francis Bacon,” “Reflections on Lucian Freud” and “Reflections on David Hockney,” the title subjects being British painters who often socialized together and motivated each other. Similarly, many of the album’s performers are close colleagues of the composer, the relationships cultivated over years working alongside each other on stage and in the studio. The album’s titular string quartet, the thrilling “Out of the Tunnel,” was commissioned from Danielle jointly by New Music USA and the Grammy-nominated performing ensemble on the album: PUBLIQuartet, whose members the composer knows well. Harpist Ashley Johnson, who performs several pieces on the album, has a long collaborative history with Danielle, and violinist Jennifer Choi has also played with Danielle in various contexts, including on DELANILA’S Overloaded album.

“I wrote the music of ‘Out of the Tunnel,’ the string quartet, especially for PUBLIQuartet, knowing their uncommon combination of skills,” Danielle explains. “They are a unique group, not only with all the classical chops you could imagine but also nearly jazz-level improvisational abilities and a rock-like energy that’s very attractive – and ideal for ‘Out of the Tunnel.’ The same goes for the several pieces with harp on the album. Ashley is such a gifted performer, one who invests so much soul and depth into her playing – just listen to her solo piece on the album, ‘The Long Way Down.’ As an interpreter of scores, she shapes the music in a way that feels deeply personal – a dream come true for a composer. It’s similar with Jennifer Choi, cellist Mike Nicolas of Brooklyn Rider and pianist Orion Weiss, as well as flutist Nathalie Joachim, who puts her breath into several nature-inspired pieces on the album. I love working with such incredible performers – they helped bring my chamber music to vivid life.” Danielle studied music composition at New York University and the Manhattan School of Music. Her music has been featured by Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! and Philip Glass’s MATA Festival, as well as at such venues as Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette and Issue Project Room. In addition to New Music USA and the American Composers Forum, she has earned honors and commissions from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, BMI and more. Danielle has also been a Sundance Institute Composers Lab Fellow, a Con Edison ‘EtM’ Composer-in-Residence, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award Finalist, a two-time MAP Fund Finalist and an ACA Associate-Artist-in-Residence. Other artists who have performed Danielle’s compositions in concert include the Janus Trio, American Modern Ensemble, harpist Bridget Kibbey, The Deviant Septet, pianist Vicky Chow, the Nouveau Classical Project and Azure Ensemble.

The film and stage credits on Danielle’s CV include assistant orchestrator for Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score to the Darren Aronofsky film mother! (starring Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence). Danielle composed cues steeped in jazz guitar for indie feature How to Follow Strangers, starring Ilana Glazer (Broad City). Other films she has worked on include David Attenborough’s Conquest of the Skies, as well as Manhattan Night (with Oscar-winner Adrien Brody) and the James Schamus film Indignation. The list of directors with whom Danielle has collaborated also includes James Mountford, Michael McQuilken, Charlie Mysak and Choike Nassor, along with the filmmakers of Four Ten Media. Danielle was assistant musical director of a workshop for a musical that iconic Irish band The Pogues are developing with David Simon of The Wire and Treme fame. And music from her string quartet “Out of the Tunnel” was first featured in Infoxication, an interdisciplinary dance project created with renowned curator Roya Sachs and choreographer Dušan Tynek in collaboration with Google and Spring Place.

Danielle has also contributed to projects led by artists from iconic composer Philip Glass to singer-songwriter Ben Folds. Other recent and upcoming undertakings include her music included in a concert of premieres fronted by avant-garde luminary John Zorn; an evening of her concert works presented by the Grammy-nominated Metropolis Ensemble; a multimedia project with composers Angélica Negrón and Alexandra du Bois and the Parhelion Trio; performances of her music presented by Chamber Music America, Bryan Park Presents and Arts Brookfield; and a film collaboration with director Francisco Oravananos (Backgammon). She has also worked in musical capacities for such brands as IMAX, Hulu, RedBull, CBS, NBC, Mattel, Sennheiser and Google, as well as the 2016 Democratic Debates. She has been a guest lecturer at Cal Arts and the Manhattan School of Music, a guest columnist for New Music Box and a panelist for the Con Edison Composer’s Residency Award. As a producer-curator, Danielle founded SYZYGY New Music, an award-winning music collective focused on presenting the work of emerging artists. SYZYGY has presented dozens of premieres, along with being featured on TV and radio.

Overloaded

With Danielle’s background in music for the concert hall, film and stage, it was inevitable that her pop project DELANILA would have an uncommon sophistication and cinematic feel. Released in 2020, DELANILA’s Overloaded album started with pre-production sessions at London’s Abbey Road before Danielle would co-produce the final recording in New York City with multiple Grammy-winning “super producer” David Bottrill (who has helmed albums by the likes of Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Tool, Muse and Smashing Pumpkins). Along with writing and singing all of the songs on Overloaded, Danielle also played guitar and synthesizers, along with adding programming and string arrangements. The lineup of supporting players included such top session musicians as Pearse MacIntyre (beats and programming), Adam Agati (electric guitar), Reuben Cainer (bass), Jordan Brooks (bass), Nicholas Semrad (keyboards), Jim Orso (drums) and Aaron Steele (drums and percussion), among others. The album was mastered by Emily Lazar, who has worked with such hit pop acts as Haim, Sia and Coldplay.

The moody, questioning lyrical themes of Overloaded reflect the strangely wired-yet-disconnected lives we lead today. “The ‘like’ button is the equivalent to a shot of dopamine – it’s like a drug, one that can cause us problems if we let it,” Danielle says, adding that it was natural to explore those dark energies in song. “I’ve always been drawn to darker music, particularly in alternative rock and pop, and I hope the words and music of Overloaded resonate with listeners – and end up being cathartic. I know people will recognize the feelings in the songs, that new normal we all have to face.”

Leading up to the release of Overloaded, the album track “It’s Been a While Since I Went Outside” was issued as a special advance single, accompanied by a self-directed “visual poem” that Danielle shot herself in the empty streets of Manhattan while on lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Created on iPhone, the video was featured in The New York Times playlist and write-up of the week’s best new music, alongside tracks by The Rolling Stones, Juice WRLD and Jónsi. Veteran New York Times critic Jon Pareles dubbed the song a “moody, retro-flavored mix of orchestral strings and distorted guitars, a slice of self-amplified cabin-fever melodrama.” Danielle was interviewed for NY1 about the video, as well as for numerous podcasts. “I made the video because the music felt reflective of the moment and, as a proud, longtime New Yorker, I’ve found it quite emotional to see this extraordinary place, which is always packed even at strange hours in the morning, so deserted,” she said. “I wanted to show people what that feels like.” The video for “It’s Been a While Since I Went Outside” won Viewer’s Choice for best music video at the California Music Video Awards, and it was also nominated for best editing.

Upon its launch, Overloaded was featured by Apple Music as a showcase Indie/Alternative release, as well as in The New York Times and on NPR’s All Songs Considered, which named the album among its top five records of the week. The album’s opening track, “The Philosopher” – which Clash magazine called “a crisp, seismic slice of pop-edged songwriting, but one that comes complete with a black, black heart” – charted on college and commercial radio formats. The video for “The Philosopher,” co-directed by Danielle with Berlin-based VFX artist Simon Villarett, was named one of 2020’s best independent films by the Spotlight Film Festival. The video for subsequent single “Time Slips Away,” edited by Danielle, was an official selection at the Los Angeles, New York and Paris Lift-Off Festivals and won awards on the festival circuit, including Best Music Video at the Independent Shorts Awards and Best Cinematography at Indie X Fest; online magazine mxdwn hailed the track’s video “as the perfect vehicle to express the song’s theme of disconnection and isolation in our current digital age.”

Ever-Expanding Creativity

With her collaborative, curatorial and culturally savvy approach to music and its presentation, Danielle takes inspirational example from such leading lights as multidisciplinary composer-producers Philip Glass and John Zorn, as well as those of Bang on a Can: Julia Wolfe, David Lang and Michael Gordon. Such rock-honed artists as Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and The National’s Bryce Dessner – musicians who now cross back and forth seamlessly over the borders between rock music, film scores and the classical concert hall – also feel like kindred spirits. “These artists have such clear, strong, personal creative voices that no matter the medium, whatever they do sounds and feels like them – transcending genre,” Danielle says. “I aspire to that, musically and in the music’s visual presentation, in particular. I don’t want to just accept a concert commission and that’s it. I want to get deeper into producing, into video-editing, into all sorts of collaborative presentations. I aim for my creative world to be ever-expanding.”

For more information, please contact Chris Schimpf, Ethan Jacobs or Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000.

www.danielleevaschwob.com