Gabriel Kahane and Timo Andres

This concert gives two friends the chance to throw caution to the wind in a free associative program that brings together four centuries’ worth of music, from J.S. Bach to world premieres written by Gabriel and Timo for one another. At the center of the program is a call and response between the two composer-performers, juxtaposing solo piano music with songs for piano and voice, ranging from Schubert, Schumann, and Thomas Adès, to Jerome Kern and Andrew Norman. Framing this quasi-live-mix tape are sets of Britten folk song settings and Ives songs, each nested in the lapidary elegance of Kurtag’s transcriptions of Bach chorale preludes.

Gabriel is a tireless collaborator. His recent credits include a track on this year’s Beck Song Reader, performances and recordings with Newman Center favorite Chris Thile, and several projects with Sufjan Stevens. Kahane has been commissioned by, among others, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He has appeared in recital with string quartet Brooklyn Rider at Carnegie Hall, at the Library of Congress with fellow composer-performer Timo Andres, and on tour throughout North America with cellist Alisa Weilerstein.

Timo’s debut album Shy and Mighty was released in 2010 to immediate critical acclaim. 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.” Timo has been appeared at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, (le) Poisson Rouge, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, San Francisco Performances, and the Barbican alongside composer Philip Glass. His works have been performed by pianist Kirill Gerstein, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Attacca Quartet, eighth blackbird, and yMusic.

“[Kahane’s] music absorbs everything from 1920s neoclassicism to bluegrass and modern indie pop with potent melodies bridging the disparate styles . . . His greatest asset is his sonorous, mesmerizing baritone; he brings to mind Sinatra in his wee-small-hours mood.”

–The New Yorker

“Timo Andres is a fastidious generator of beauty. Most obviously it is musical beauty, as Andres, a composer and pianist who is not yet 30, is a prodigy who was improvising on songs at the age of 6, graduated from Juilliard and Yale, has a full plate of commissioned works, and has released two albums that have provoked comparisons to John Adams and Charles Ives.”

–StarTribune (Minneapolis)