Composer/pianist Timo Andres, who has been praised for his “acute ear” by the New York Times’s Anthony Tommasini and “stubborn nose” by the New Yorker’s Alex Ross, made his Nonesuch debut with the 2010 release of his album Shy and Mighty, followed by Home Stretch in 2013. He performs works by several Nonesuch artists, including himself, on the 2020 album I Still Play.
Composer and pianist Timo Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) grew up in rural Connecticut and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Andres’s 2023/24 season highlights include a sold-out recital debut for Carnegie Hall; the world premiere of a piano concerto written by Andres for Aaron Diehl, led by John Adams at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition, his orchestrations and arrangements for Justin Peck’s new production of Sufjan Stevens’s Illinoise have had sold-out runs presented by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, The Fisher Center at Bard, and at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory.
The season also included a tour with the Calder Quartet featuring a new piano quintet by Andres, performed at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, San Francisco Performances, Chamber Music Albuquerque and Chamber Music in Napa Valley; and Philip Glass’s Etudes at Lincoln Center, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, all part of a celebration of a new edition of the Glass Etudes for which Andres served as advisor and editor.
Notable commissions include Everything Happens So Much for the Boston Symphony; Strong Language for the Takács Quartet, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Shriver Hall Concert Series; Steady Hand, a two-piano concerto commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia premiered at the Barbican by Andres and David Kaplan; and The Blind Banister, a concerto for Jonathan Biss, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
As a pianist, Timo Andres has appeared with the LA Phil, North Carolina Symphony, the Albany Symphony, the New World Symphony, the Metropolis Ensemble, among others. He has performed solo recitals for Lincoln Center, and Wigmore Hall.
Andres’s collaborators include Becca Stevens, Jeffrey Kahane, Gabriel Kahane, Brad Mehldau, Nadia Sirota, and—of course—Philip Glass, who selected Andres as the recipient of the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize. He was nominated for a Grammy award for his performances on 2021’s The Arching Path, an album of music by Christopher Cerrone.
Andres’s collaborations with Sufjan Stevens also include his May 2023 recording with Conor Hanick of Stevens’s latest album, Reflections; arrangements of ballets for New York City Ballet, and a solo piano album, The Decalogue.
A Nonesuch Records artist, Timo Andres has multiple albums including a 2024 release, The Blind Banister, recorded with frequent collaborators Andrew Cyr and the Metropolis Ensemble, featuring his cello concerto, Upstate Obscura with Inbal Segev, and the titular piece with himself at the keyboard. His debut release, Shy and Mighty, was released to critical acclaim in 2010. A Yale School of Music graduate, he is a Yamaha/Bösendorfer Artist and is on the composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music at the New School.
