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Students, Faculty + Alumni

New CD, "Shy and Mighty," from alum Timo Andres

Music for two pianos performed by Andres ’07BA, ’09MM and David Kaplan ’07MM, ’08MMA

Shy and Mighty, the first album from composer and pianist Timo Andres, has been named a Pick of the Week by WNYC and has received four starts from the Guardian. Featuring ten interrelated piano pieces and released on the Nonesuch label, Shy and Mighty is performed by Andres and fellow alum David Kaplan.

Though steeped in the classical canon, Andres has expressed his admiration for a range of artists, like Radiohead, Brian Eno, Múm, Sigur Rós, Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Olivia Tremor Control, and Boards of Canada. His classical influences include John Adams, Charles Ives, György Ligeti, and his former teachers, Ingram Marshall and Martin Bresnick.

While each track stands on its own, Andres conceived of Shy and Mighty as an album-length work. As he writes in the liner notes: “When I sat down to write Shy and Mighty, this was very clearly my goal for it — that I would write an album for two pianos. I was very focused on the recorded medium — even though this is obviously something that works live, that was somehow secondary. The two albums that really did it for me were Olivia Tremor Control’s Black Foliage and Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children, both of which are structured in a similar way... larger set pieces and little transitional things in between. And that’s what I set out to do — I didn’t end up writing too many miniatures, but that was the idea, anyway.”

John Schaefer of WNYC called the album "an impressive debut," and the Guardian called him "unquestionably a distinctive talent."

Visit Nonesuch for more info.