About us
Who We Are
Ursel Quint
Ursel Quint was born in Bonn, Germany, where she grew up, went to school and had her first musical education. She then studied piano, chamber music and composition in Cologne, Bloomington, Ind.(USA) and Zurich, as well as German Language and Literature in Bonn. She lives and works in Bonn as pianist, composer, media artist, and is teacher of piano at the municipal conservatory.
After two decades of performing as classical pianist, solo and in various chamber ensembles, as accompanist for theatre, film and dance performances, she began exploring the possibilities of new media and improvisation. Her interest in video led her to attend workshops on video production and editing. She participated in a film editing workshop at Disney Studios in Orlando, Florida. She has also been active in various New Music and Improvisation ensembles.
In July 2009, she began a collaboration with Barry L. Roshto as the Media Art Duo SnowKrash. Since then the focus of her artistic work has transformed into composing and performing her own pieces, as well as those created by SnowKrash.
Barry L. Roshto
Barry was born in Alexandria, Louisiana (USA), as the oldest son of a „Missionary Baptist“ Preacher, which actually afforded a multitude of advantages, as well as the obvious elephants in the room. Growing up in a rich southern vocal tradition, he was singing, singing, singing at each and every point of social interaction, every day of his life. Church for sure, but home, school, scouts‘ campfire, or especially messing around in the garage with a 3 chord song! He did also have traditional piano lessons. After studies in voice, piano and composition in the US, he moved to Europe in 1982. He continued studies in composition and musicology in Bonn, Cologne and London College of Music and Media (BMus in Composing for New Media with distinction). He lives and works in Bonn as composer, teacher and media artist. Until July 2024, he also served as teacher of piano, composition and music technology at the Ludwig v. Beethoven municipal conservatory in Bonn. In July 2009, he began a collaboration with Ursel Quint as the Media Art Duo SnowKrash. Since then, most of his artistic endeavours have been invested in this project.
How We Work
What She Says
I am convinced that always being aware of the tradition is absolutely necessary for every new piece of art. My very traditional musical upbringing provides me with a large fundus of material to choose from, to then transform and present in a hopefully completely new manner and context.
I need to have a fairly solid structure to start with, a skeleton which I can fill with flesh and blood. Spontaneous ideas are very welcome, once I have a plan of where everything is leading to.
I love to combine old-fashioned „music-making and performing“ with AI-technique und digitally produced Sounds and Visuals. I hate having to deal with technical Problems and DIY-procedures. Fortunately, most of the time this is something I can out source out to him. So we have a symbiotic relationship!
What He Says
We certainly have different ways of working and different skill sets. But, there are no rigid rolls when we are making a piece. I do spend a lot of time facilitating infrastructure, whether that involves mechanical or virtual engineering, analogue tinkering or programming. I want to have as many tools available as possible, in order to achieve the look and feel, that atmosphere, we want to create. I will admit that this can lead to a procrastination of working on the actual performance. She wants there to be a performance plan at the beginning of the work process. I work from the bottom up, she is doing it top down. This does indeed lead to friction, but has proven to be very productive.