Composer and pianist Timo Andres, whose latest album, Home Stretch, was released on Nonesuch last year, is the subject of the latest episode of Q2 Spaces, a video series from the online new-music station Q2 offering a look inside the homes and studios of composers and performers in the new-music world. On the show, Andres welcomes viewers into his Brooklyn home for a conversation about Beethoven, Ingram Marhsall, Edward Gorey, and much more. Watch the episode here via NPR Music:

Timo Andres gives the world premiere of a new piece, titled Work Songs, at Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall in New York City this Wednesday, March 19, part of the 2014 Ecstatic Music Festival. Andres wrote the new song cycle especially for fellow composers and multi-instrumentalists Gabriel Kahane, Ted Hearne, Becca Stevens, and Nathan Koci, who will perform it in the concert. A multi-movement work inspired by old-fashioned American parlor songs, these “work songs” are set to texts having to do with facets of professions, jobs, and labor. The arrangements are tailored to the performers, with three singers, two guitars, keyboards, accordion, and piano. The program will also include individual work by each of the other composers in the collective, all arranged for the quintet to perform together.

"Artists' working habits have always fascinated me," says Andres; "Matisse sculpting in bed, Charles Ives's Bach-ian eye-opener—not so much for the insight they provide into the actual work, but more as an idealized template for how an artist should exist in the world. Work Songs is a collection of thoughts on the creation of art. Some are songs of hardship and complaint, and others are meant to provide comfort, empathy, or possible solutions to problems."

A co-presentation with WNYC's New Sounds, the concert will be hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer and webcast live, starting at 7:30 PM ET, on q2music.org. For tickets to the event, visit kaufmanmusiccenter.org.

This marks the fourth season of the Ecstatic Music Festival, offering collaborative concerts that bring together performers and composers from across the sonic spectrum. Launched in January 2011, the annual Ecstatic Music Festival has been hailed as "a who’s who of the current music scene” (WQXR) and “the most bracing combinations of adventurous, fulfilling music in recent memory" (NPR).

"This is a tremendously exciting and productive time for music in terms of the kinds of collaborations that are taking place, and the amount of wonderful work being invented," says Lydia Kontos, Executive Director of Kaufman Music Center. "The Ecstatic Music Festival offers an unparalleled opportunity to see artists you love doing something completely new, or to get engaged by artists who are new to you."

On his latest album, Home Stretch, Timo Andres pairs the newly composed title work with two reinventions of works by musical heroes in Mozart "Coronation" Concerto Re-Composition, described by The New Yorker's Alex Ross as "mesmerizing," and Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno. Metropolis Ensemble chamber orchestra performs with the composer on piano. The album, says NPR, offers "thought-provoking glimpses into how the past and the present merge in classical music today."

Nonesuch Records released Andres's debut album, Shy and Mighty, in 2010. The New Yorker called it "the kind of sprawling, brazen work that a young composer should write," achieving "an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene."

To pick up a copy of either album, head to iTunes or the Nonesuch Store, where CD orders include a download of the complete album at checkout.