André van Haren

Richard Schletty is a performing songwriter from St. Paul's West Side where he and his wife Pat have been raising seven kids. 

Richard's college buddies from St. John's U in Collegeville, MN, formed a band in the early 70s called Rocka-Rolla. They still get together once or twice a year to perform early rock classics for smallish crowds.

Schletty is an experienced cantor, songleader and choral singer. He sang at Masses, funerals and weddings for many years at St. Matthew's Catholic Church on Saint Paul's West Side. He currently sings at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown St. Paul.

In 2007, Richard joined the bass section of Waltham Abbey Singers, a local Renaissance-Baroque choir which performs sacred music a cappella. The director of this fine chorus is Brian Link.

Richard has done gigs in local coffee shops, singing his own Folk-Rock originals. As a member of the Minnesota Association of Songwriters and the Catholic Association of Music, he is striving to improve the form and content of his songwriting and the resonance of his solo public performances of Folk-Rock and Praise music.

A major opus called "Hungry For Heaven" is in formation with excellent composer, guitarist and synth instrumentalist David Gómez Sanz, who lives in Spain. It is just one of many internet collaborations Richard has done since the summer of the 2004. Schletty uses his Macintosh computer to tap into collaborators via email, music sharing web sites and FTP file transfer. His favorite program for digital recording, sequencing and mixing is Apple Logic Express.

Richard has done several collaborations with André van Haren. Richard and André exchange MP3, MIDI, GarageBand and Sibelius files in order to produce finished songs, many of which have complete sheet music available.