Shy and Mighty

Timo Andres (b. 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 2010 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… more mighty than shy, [Andres] sounds like himself.”

Notable works include Strong Language, a 2015 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. In April 2016, Andres joined New World Symphony musicians for the world premiere of his Tides and Currents, and in 16/17 he writes a major new work for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, to be led by Music Director Andris Nelsons.

In 15/16, Andres performed a duo tour with fellow composer/performer Gabriel Kahane–for whom he wrote a new work, commissioned by Carnegie Hall–to Carnegie, the Newman Center in Denver, the Schubert Club in St. Paul, the Cliburn, and UNC-Chapel Hill. He also toured with with Philip Glass, performing Glass’s complete piano Etudes, with concerts in Mexico City and Chicago. (These follow 14/15 performances with Glass at Brooklyn’s BAM, San Francisco Performances, the National Concert Hall in Dublin and London’s Barbican Centre), and joined violinist Yevgeny Kutik in Washington, DC for the first of a three-concert series curated by composer Nico Muhly for The Phillips Collection’s 75th Anniversary celebrations.

Other recent highlights include commissions from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and a piano quintet for Jonathan Biss and the Elias String Quartet, for a consortium including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and San Francisco Performances.

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 the North Carolina Symphony in January and May 2015.

Andres earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale. He frequently performs with the new music ensemble ACME and is one sixth of the Sleeping Giant composers’ collective.

David Kaplan, pianist, has been called “excellent and adventurous” by The New York Times, and praised by the Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. He has appeared at London’s Barbican Centre, at Miami’s Arscht Center with Itzhak Perlman, and worked with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Recent recital appearances include the Ravinia Festival, Sarasota Opera House, and National Gallery, and he looks forward to appearances at Music on Main in Vancouver and Strathmore’s Music at the Mansion in Baltimore. An avid concerto soloist who often conducts from the keyboard, he recently performed Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the Johnstown Symphony and James Blachly, and the De Falla Harpsichord Concerto at the Mondavi Center in Davis, CA.

Kaplan’s passion for drawing meaningful connections between music of the past and present has resulted in New Dances of the League of David, a piano-suite that incorporates newly commissioned miniatures into Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, including such eminent composers as Augusta Read Thomas, Caroline Shaw, Gabriel Kahane, and Andrew Norman. Selected as one of the “Best Classical Music Performances of 2015,” by The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini wrote: “‘New Dances’ is no gimmick… it was fascinating to hear Schumann through the ears of these perceptive, stylistically varied contemporary composers.”

Kaplan balances solo performances with meaningful collaborations. This season includes programs together with the Enso and Ariel String Quartets, a new violin sonata commissioned from Christopher Cerrone together with Rachel Lee Priday, a joint recital with pulitzer prize winning composer/performer Caroline Shaw, and piano-duo work with long-time collaborator Timo Andres (including a new two-piano concerto for the Britten Sinfonia in 2017). As a core member of Decoda, the affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall, David performs frequently in New York’s most exciting venues, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to National Sawdust, and appears frequently as part of the group’s groundbreaking residency work, which has taken him on residencies throughout the US as well as internationally in Abu Dhabi, Mexico, and the UK. He appears widely as a guest of the New York Chamber Soloists, with whom he first performed replacing an ailing Menahem Pressler. He is a young veteran of numerous distinguished chamber music festivals and series: he has appeared at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and at Seattle Town Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, Barge Music, and the Canadian festivals of Banff and Orford. In addition, he has been a guest at Ravinia (RSMI), Tanglewood, Bard, and the Mostly Mozart Festival. He is the Artistic Director of Lyrica Chamber Music, a community series in Morris County, NJ celebrating its 30th season next year.

Kaplan has recorded for Naxos, in music of Mohammed Fairouz with soprano Kiera Duffy (2016), and on Nonesuch in the acclaimed disc, Shy and Mighty (2010), featuring an album length two-piano suite by Timo Andres.

The recipient of a DMA from Yale University in 2014, Kaplan’s distinguished mentors over the years include the late Claude Frank, Alfred Brendel, Richard Goode, and Emanuel Ax. Before entering Yale, he studied at the University of California Los Angeles with Walter Ponce, and under the auspices of a Fulbright Grant, he studied conducting with Lutz Köhler at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Away from the keyboard, he loves cartooning and cooking, and is mildly obsessed with classic cars.

David is proud to be a Yamaha Artist.