ANDREW SAUERWEIN
PROFESSOR OF MUSIC COMPOSITION AND THEORY
Dr. ANDREW MARK SAUERWEIN
Andrew Mark Sauerwein has been composing, studying, and teaching music for more than four decades. His work demonstrates a balance of focused expressive purpose, thoughtful curiosity, pensive irony, and subtle humor. He has composed more than seventy works in a variety of genres, from solo and chamber works to choral and orchestral pieces, as well as songs, improvisatory works, electronic music, and pieces combining Western instruments with Balinese gamelan. His music has been performed in church worship services, on the concert stage, in schools, at conferences and public events, on mission trips, at homes, in pubs and coffee shops, and on the Belhaven Singing Christmas Tree. His music has traveled to Canada, Israel, Peru, and Japan.
Dr. Sauerwein joined the faculty at Belhaven University in 2005 to start the composition program and oversee the theory and musicianship curriculum. He directs the Composers Forum, through which he has led a variety of collaborative arts projects with students from various departments. His other teaching credits include studio lessons in composition, Music Theory, Musicianship, Introduction to Creative Process, Form & Analysis, Counterpoint, Survey of New Music, Songwriting, Jazz Theory and History, Seminar in Musical Aesthetics. For three years, he taught in BU’s Worldview Curriculum. He has occasionally co-taught in BU’s Honors Colloquium. He even served as Interim Chair of the Music Department (2020-23) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before coming to BU, Sauerwein was a visiting professor of music at Northwestern College of Iowa (2003-05). He also taught music theory and music appreciation as an adjunct at Duke University (2001-03). He has been an AP Reader (grading high-school AP Music Theory exams) for the Educational Testing Service since 2007, has adjudicated grant and fellowship applications for the Mississippi Arts Council, and has served periodically as a judge for the annual student composition competitions of the Music Teachers National Association since 2018. In 2017, he co-founded (along with fellow Jackson-area composition faculty) the Jackson New Music Festival, which produces an annual concert for Jackson-area emerging and professional composers.
Dr. Sauerwein holds degrees in composition from Duke University and the University of Oregon and a degree in biblical studies from Multnomah University. He has been an active member of the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers since 1998, including term appointments as President and as Secretary of the Board. He is a lifetime member of Pi Kappa Lambda. He has, in the past, been a member of the Society for Music Theory, the College Music Society, and the American Composers Forum.
The son and grandson of pastors and teachers, Dr. Sauerwein committed his life to Christ at an early age and is a lifelong churchgoer. This, along with his father’s lifelong involvement with teaching, pastoral ministry, and inductive Bible study methods, has profoundly shaped his approach to music composition and cultural practices of music-making. He has been an active member of Redeemer Church PCA (Jackson) since 2005, where he helped establish Redeemer Community Arts. He was ordained as a Ruling Elder in 2024.