New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Congratulations to composer and pianist Timo Andres on receiving the Chamber
Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS)'s Elise L. Stoeger Prize. The Stoeger Prize is a $25,000 cash prize, awarded biennially by CMS to recognize significant contributions to the field of chamber music composition.
"We are delighted with our judges' choice of Timo Andres as winner of the 2025 Stoeger Prize," said CMS Artistic Directors
David Finckel and Wu Han. "His chamber music is highly regarded among both prominent musicians and presenters who have found his works engaging, skillfully composed for the instruments, and attractive for today's listeners. We offer our congratulations to Timo and hope that this prize not only will reinforce his dedication to chamber music, but also will enable him to travel even further down his high-level artistic path."
"I grew up hearing the canonical works of chamber music at Norfolk's summer festival and
Music Mountain," said Timo Andres, "and poring over recordings by the Takács Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio. My favorite pieces by the composers I most admire tend to be their chamber works; these small-to-medium formats can be somehow grand and intimate at the same time, revealing the most specific and sometimes idiosyncratic aspects of their author's voices. I feel equally challenged and freed to take risks when I write chamber music, and writing it, I've learned the most about becoming a better composer and musician. To be recognized in this medium by one of its greatest institutional standard-bearers is a huge and unexpected honor."
Timo Andres' latest album, The
Blind Banister, released on Nonesuch in March 2024, has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical. The record comprises three works by the composer/pianist: the piano concerto The
Blind Banister (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2016), with Andres as soloist, and Upstate Obscura for chamber orchestra and cello, with soloist Inbal Segev—both of which feature Metropolis Ensemble and conductor Andrew Cyr—and the solo piano piece Colorful History, also performed by Andres. He received a 2024 Tony Award nomination for his orchestrations and arrangements for Justin Peck's 2024 production of Sufjan Stevens's Illinoise, the cast album of which was released on Nonesuch in May.
Timo Andres 2013 Nonesuch album of orchestral works, Home Stretch, has been hailed for its "playful intelligence and individuality," (Guardian) and of his 2010 debut album for two pianos, Shy and Mighty (performed by himself and duo partner
David Kaplan), 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."
