New Works by Timo Andres on PSNY

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 6, 2015, 12:30 p.m.

Timo Andres: modern troubadour. No, he doesn't wander the French countryside singing Occitan poetry. But like a troubadour, Andres has been performing and composing across the country, commissioned by modern patrons such as Carnegie Hall and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival for fellow performers such as yMusic, eighth blackbird, and pianists Bruce Levingston and Kristin Elgersma. We're proud to offer a batch of Andres' latest works for direct download on PSNY. 

To begin, consider two new works for solo piano: Clear and Cold, and Heavy Sleep. Both highlight Timo's nuanced take on composers of the past—Ravel and Chopin, respectively—and offer new interpretations on the terrors and pleasures of melancholy and somnambulation. Check out this excerpt from Heavy Sleep: 

Andres' new works for chamber ensembles expand his palette to include many more hands and instruments than his own two at the piano. Andres describes Safe Travels, composed for yMusic, as "a short, peripatetic piece built on a constantly-shifting harmonic pattern"; these shifts remind the listener of the experience of travel, with its endless, shifting patterns, traversing the gamut of harmonic possibilities.

Checkered Shade, written for eighth blackbird, takes the pen-and-ink drawings of Astrid Bowlby as its metaphorical inspiration. The piece mirrors the experience of seeing Bowlby's work: an intense attention to detail, slowly followed by the realization that the small pattern also constitutes a much more complex whole. 

Timo Andres at the Phillips Collection

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 19, 2015, 10:31 a.m.

Pianist-composer Timo Andres has been busy in 2015: in the first three weeks of this new year, he's already performed five times, across the nation. These include performances at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh, NC, The Slowdown in Omaha, Nebraska, and also the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. 

Known for its collection of impressionist and modern art, the Phillips has been holding concerts in its intimate galleries that speak to its curatorial mission of combining old and new, presenting works from the 19th century next to 20th century works, creating an emergent dialogue across time.

In his performance on January 11th, Timo Andres achieved a similar feat: he performed works by Franz Schubert and Philip Glass, along with his own work, "At The River". No stranger to the interplay between the European canon and contemporary composition (see his updated version of Mozart's "Coronation Concerto"), Andres "approached these works [...] gingerly, as if they were part of a living dialogue," wrote Anne Midgette in the Washington Post. 

Check out Andres performing "At The River" in his Brooklyn home: 

Adrian Knight: Performances in New York, Upcoming Long-Form Piano Composition

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 23, 2014, 2:53 p.m.

San Francisco's Mobius Trio, a classical guitar trio composed of Robert Nance, Mason Fish, and Matthew Holmes-Linder, is coming to New York to perform Adrian Knight's Bon Voyage, a work for three guitars that was composed specificaly for these players. The trio will perform this work in three venues: November 5th at Spectrum in Manhattan, November 6th at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn, and November 7th at Van Dyke Park (AKA New Amsterdam Records' space in Brooklyn). Check out a video of them performing this work on some beautiful, vintage guitars: 

Also, be on the lookout for a new, long-form composition for Piano by Adrian Knight, commissioned by pioneering new music pianist R. Andrew Lee. The piece is a result of Lee's commissioning project for new works "of considerable duration" by Knight and Randy Gibson. The new work is set to be performed at the Wayward Music Series in Seattle, WA, in 2015, and will also make its way to the East coast. Lee said he was inspired by Knight's composition Unruhe, from his 2008 Ricky Bruch Album. Check it out here: