Timothy Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) is a composer and pianist. He grew up in rural Connecticut and lives in Brooklyn, NY. His compositions meld a classical-music upbringing with diverse interests in the natural world, graphic arts, technology, cooking, and photography. He 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.

An avid pianist from an early age, Timothy (Timo for short) performs widely, focusing especially on music by his contemporaries. “New music cannot be intimidating when played with this degree of skill and zest,” proclaimed Boston Globe

critic Richard Dyer. Andres recently played solo concerts at Strathmore Performing Arts Center and on the Wordless Music Series at Miller Theater, and performed his solo piano piece How can I live in your world of ideas? on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series; the Los AngelesTimes’s Mark Swed pronounced it “irresistible”. In the 2011-12 season, Andres will join theWaterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony in his re-composition of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 26, K. 537; he also plays the work with Jeffrey Kahane and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, alongside a new work commissioned by the LACO.

Timo’s début album, Shy and Mighty, was released by Nonesuch in May 2010. The disc features ten interrelated pieces for two pianos, performed by Timo and co-pianist David Kaplan. An immediate critical success, Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker that Shy and Mighty “achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene… more mighty than shy, [Andres] sounds like himself.” Andres joined jazz pianist and Carnegie Hall’s 2010-11 composer-in-residence, Brad Mehldau, to perform sections of Shy and Mighty at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in March 2011; he also joined Mehldau and friends for the premiere of Mehldau’s Carnegie Hall-commissioned Rock and Roll Dances.

Recent works include Trade Winds, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Ensemble ACJW;Family Plays, a short song cycle for Gabriel Kahane; It takes a long time to become a good composer, a companion suite to Schumann’s Kreisleriana; a re-imagined version of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 26 for Metropolis Ensemble with original left hand and cadenzas; an Ives-inspired work for ACME Quartet; an octet for New World Symphony chamber players; a “double concerto” for violinist-violist Owen Dalby and the Albany Symphony; and a chamber orchestra work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which was conducted by John Adams.

Timo earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale. In addition to music, he gravitated toward visual arts, and moonlights as a professional graphic and web designer. He first studied composition during high school at Juilliard’s Pre-College division, and has since worked with Martin Bresnick, Ingram Marshall, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Chris Theofanidis. Eleanor Hancock was his piano teacher for many years; later, he studied with Frederic Chiu. Timo is one sixth of the Sleeping Giant composers’ collective, and performs regularly with the Ted Hearne Band and ACME. He has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, BMI, and ASCAP, as well as grants from Meet the Composer and the American Music Center.

For more information on Timo, check out his website here.