"Senior" by Timo Andres '09MM premieres at Carnegie Hall
Composer Timothy (Timo) Andres enjoyed a successful premiere of his orchestral work "Senior" in Carnegie Hall on Sunday, March 22.Written for string quartet and orchestra, the piece is written to evoke the state of mind of a senior in college. The New York Youth Symphony commissioned the 12-minute work, performing it with the ACME String Quartet and conductor Ryan McAdams.
According to Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times, "This pensive and restless music does seem to touch on the conflicting emotions that Mr. Andres identifies with senior slump: expectancy and finality, bewilderment and boredom. But the piece was fascinating on musical terms alone... The acuteness of Mr. Andres’s ear lends intricacy to the layered lines and pungency to the piercing harmonies."
Timothy Andres (b. 1985 in Palo Alto, CA) is a creator and interpreter of contemporary music. He grew up in rural Connecticut and currently studies at Yale School of Music with Ingram Marshall, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Christoher Theofanidis. His compositions juxtapose his classical-music background with interests in the natural world and minimalist music, art, and design. An avid performer from an early age, Timothy (Timo for short) has played at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center, focusing 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 of a recent recital in New York. He studied piano for many years with Eleanor Hancock, and later with Frederic Chiu, Boris Berman and Elisabeth Parisot.
Timothy has spent summers at Tanglewood, Norfolk, Bowdoin, and Aspen music festivals. He first studied composition during high school, at Juilliard’s Pre-College division (with Eric Ewazen) and has since worked with John Halle, Matthew Suttor, Kathryn Alexander, Michael Klingbeil, and Orianna Webb. His works have been premièred by Richard Lalli, Ransom Wilson, the NOW Ensemble, the Hindemith Ensemble, H. Robert Reynolds, and Jonathan Sheffer. Upcoming premières include a work for the ACME string quartet and New York Youth Symphony, an octet for members of New World Symphony, orchestral works for the Yale Symphony and Yale Philharmonia, and a chamber orchestra work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to be conducted by John Adams in May 2009. He will also perform on the Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella new music series.
As an undergraduate at Yale, Timothy wrote music criticism for the Yale Daily News and ran IGIGI, a coalition of Yale-affiliated composers. He was a founding member of the Hindemith Ensemble, Yale’s premiere chamber ensemble, and toured Germany with them as pianist and composer-in-residence. Awards include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2008), the BMI Carlos Surinach award (2004) and three ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Awards. In 2004, he was profiled in a New Yorker article about young composers by Alex Ross.
Read the complete New York Times review of the 3/22 performance here.
More info on Timo Andres at andres.com.
