Timo Andres & Yevgeny Kutik

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.

With a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique” (The New York Times), Russian-American violinist Yevgeny Kutik has captivated audiences worldwide with an old-world sound that communicates a modern intellect. Praised for his technical precision and virtuosity, he is also lauded for his poetic and imaginative interpretations of both standard works and newly composed repertoire.

Yevgeny Kutik made his major orchestral debut in 2003 with Keith Lockhart and The Boston Pops as the First Prize recipient of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition. In 2006, he was awarded the Salon de Virtuosi Grant as well as the Tanglewood Music Center Jules Reiner Violin Prize. He was a featured performer for the 2012 March of the Living observances, where he played for audiences at the Krakow Opera House and for over 10,000 people at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Committed to fostering creative relationships with living composers, Kutik has performed premieres of works by Timo Andres, Ron Ford, Sheila Silver, and George Tsontakis, and has also been involved in the performances of new and rarely played works by Kati Agócs, Joseph Schwantner, Nico Muhly, and Donald Martino.

A native of Minsk, Belarus, Kutik began violin studies with his mother, Alla Zernitskaya, and immigrated to the US with his family at the age of five. An advocate for the Jewish Federations of North America, the organization that assisted his family in coming to the US, he regularly speaks and performs across the country to promote the assistance of refugees from around the world. Kutik’s discography includes Music from the Suitcase (Marquis Classics 2014) and Sounds of Defiance (Marquis Classics 2012). He releases his third solo album, Words Fail, on Marquis Classics in October 2016.

Kutik holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory and currently resides in Boston. Kutik’s violin was crafted in Italy in 1915 by Stefano Scarampella.