PIVOT: New Adventures in the Performing Arts with Timo Andres piano
Palo Alto-native, composer/pianist Timo Andres brings a program inspired by visual patterns, to the PIVOT five-day exploration of creator-performers on the American artistic edge. The program comprises his works as well as others by fellow new-generation American composers Caroline Shaw, Christopher Cerrone, and Eric Shanfield.
Timo Andres (born 1985, Palo Alto, CA) is a composer and pianist who grew up in rural Connecticut and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. A Nonesuch Records artist, his newest album of orchestral works, Home Stretch, has been hailed for its “playful intelligence and individuality,” (The Guardian) and of his debut album for two pianos, Shy and Mighty, Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that “it achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene.”
Andres’s notable works include Strong Language, a string quartet for the Takács Quartet, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Shriver Hall Concert Series and The Blind Banister, a piano concerto for Jonathan Biss and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Co-commissioned by the SPCO with Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Blind Banister was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist. The New York Philharmonic and Biss performed the work in April 2017. Also this season, Andres has world premieres with the Boston Symphony and the Barbican Centre with the Britten Sinfonia. He performed the world premiere of a piano concerto by Ingram Marshall—written specifically for him—with John Adams and the LA Phil, and appeared at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where he received the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize; Philip Glass selected Andres as the recipient of this award.
Recent highlights include commissions for the New World Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and a piano quintet for Jonathan Biss and the Elias String Quartet. He has toured the US with fellow composer/performer, Gabriel Kahane, and frequently appears with Philip Glass, performing Glass’s complete piano Etudes throughout the world.
As a pianist, Andres has performed solo recitals for Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, the Phillips Collection, (le) Poisson Rouge, and San Francisco Performances. He appeared at the 2014 Ojai Festival with the Knights Chamber Orchestra, and performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with in repeat performances with the North Carolina Symphony.