Art of Piano Concert: Timo Andres, Eric Le Sage & Art of Piano Musicians

Composer and pianist Timo Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) grew up in rural Connecticut and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

2023/24 highlights include a solo recital debut for Carnegie Hall, new commissions for the Moab Music Festival and the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a tour with the Calder Quartet including performances at San Francisco Performances and Chamber Music Albuquerque, and the world premiere of a piano concerto for Aaron Diehl at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by John Adams. Andres’s orchestrations and arrangements for Justin Peck’s new production of Sufjan Stevens’s Illinoise, were premiered in a sold-out Summer 2023 run at The Fisher Center at Bard; the production has upcoming dates in Chicago, New York and elsewhere.

Notable works include Everything Happens So Much for the Boston Symphony; Strong Language for the Takács Quartet, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Shriver Hall Concert Series; Steady Hand, a two-piano concerto commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia premiered at the Barbican by Andres and David Kaplan; and The Blind Banister, a concerto for Jonathan Biss, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist.

As a pianist, Timo Andres has appeared with the LA Phil, North Carolina Symphony, the Albany Symphony, the New World Symphony, the Metropolis Ensemble, among others. He has performed solo recitals for Lincoln Center, and Wigmore Hall.

Collaborators include Becca Stevens, Jeffrey Kahane, Gabriel Kahane, Brad Mehldau, Nadia Sirota, and Philip Glass, who selected Andres as the recipient of the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize. He was nominated for a Grammy award for his performances on 2021’s The Arching Path, an album of music by Christopher Cerrone.

Andres’s collaborations with Sufjan Stevens also include his May 2023 recording with Conor Hanick of Stevens’s latest album, Reflections; arrangements of ballets for New York City Ballet, and a solo piano album, The Decalogue.

A Nonesuch Records artist, Timo Andres has multiple solo albums on the label (with more set for upcoming release in 2024) and is featured as composer and pianist on the May 2020 release I Still Play, an album celebrating Robert Hurwitz. A Yale School of Music graduate, he is a Yamaha/Bösendorfer Artist and is on the composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music at the New School.

Eric Le Sage is established as a famous representative of the French piano school, regularly boasted for his very subtle sound, his real sense of structure and poetic phrasing. Already when he was 20 years old, the Financial Times had described him as “an extremely cultivated disciple of the great French tradition of Schumann piano”. In 2010, die Zeit, praised his “ideal French piano aesthetics and clarity”.

Eric is invited to perform as a soloist with orchestras at the highest level such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Saint-Louis Symphony Orchestra, Berlin’s Konzerthaus Orchester, SWR Symphony Orchestra, Bremer Philharmoniker, Dresden Philharmonie, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Göteborg Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, Münchner Kammer Orchester, Dresdner Philharmonie, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with conductors like Edo de Waart, Stéphane Denève, Pablo Gonzalez, Fabien Gabel, Sir Jeffrey Tate, François Leleux, Alexander Liebreich, Kazuki Yamada, Alondra de la Parra, Lionel Bringuier, François Leleux, Michael Stern, Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, Sir Simon Rattle and Yannick Nézet-Seguin.

Eric has performed recitals and chamber music concerts in major venues across the world such as Wigmore Hall, Suntory Hall, Carnegie Hall, Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle, Paris Philharmonie, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Radio France, Cologne Philharmonie, Essen Philharmonie, Dresden Philharmonie, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Schwartzenberg’s Schubertiade, Salzburg Mozarteum, Ludwigsburg Festival, Prague’s Rudolfinium, Taipei National Concert Hall, Konzerthaus Vienna, Luxembourg Philharmonie, Dublin’s celebrity series, Edinburgh International Festival, Düsseldorf Tonhalle, la Roque d’Anthéron Festival, Potsdam Sanssouci, Brussels’ Bozar, Berlin’s Boulezsaal, Konzerthaus Berlin, Berlin Philharmonie.

Eric Le Sage released many albums, all of which were critically acclaimed and received multiple awards. Besides his world-famous Schumann cycle in 2010 that were awarded the very prestigious Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, other milestones include Francis Poulenc's complete chamber works with piano (BMG, 1998), Fauré¹s complete works for chamber music with piano, and Brahms complete chamber music works (B-Records, 2021).

Two magnificent albums were released in 2022: A Mozart album under the baton of his longtime stage partner François Leleux and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra on Alpha (concertos n° 17&24) and a solo album on Sony Classical featuring rare French repertoire from the beginning of the 20th century. In the last few years Eric released Fauré’s complete Nocturnes on Alpha (2019) and Beethoven's last 3 Sonatas (2014). Other recent chamber music recordings include collaborations with such artists as tenor Julian Pregardien for a Schumann album (2019) or Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Daishin Kashimoto, Aurélien Pascal and more for albums around repertoire from Vienna in the 1900s, and works by Nino Rota.

A true chamber music lover, Eric regularly plays with friends like Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Quatuor Ebène, François Leleux, Jean-Guihen Queyras, les Vents Français, François Salque, Lise Berthaud, Daishin Kashimoto, Claudio Bohorquez, Julian Prégardien, Sandrine Piau, Olivier Latry and many other musicians.

Born in Aix en Provence, Eric Le Sage was the winner of major international competitions such as Porto in 1985 and the Robert Schumann competition in Zwickau, in 1989. He was also a prize-winner at Leeds International competition the same year, which allowed him to perform under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. Eric Le Sage is Professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany.

Hailing from Shenzhen, China and now based in Toronto, Canada, Xuan HE brings her artistry and musical expressivity to the concert stage as a solo pianist, collaborative artist, and chamber musician across Asia, Europe, and North America. She has distinguished herself as a laureate of prestigious competitions, including first prize at the 2025 Ohio International Piano Duet & Duo Competition and medalist at the 2017 Brevard Music Festival Solo Piano Competition and the 2016 Hong Kong International Piano Open Competition. 

In the recent seasons, Xuan devotes her passion to modern contemporary solo and duet piano repertoire. In August 2025, she made her debut as a silent film accompanist. Her structured improvisation for the 1934 Chinese film The Goddess received a sold-out performance in Shenzhen. 

Xuan holds degrees from St. Olaf College, Minnesota, the University of Toronto, and the International Opera Academy, Belgium. She is currently pursuing a doctorate degree with Professor Lydia Wong and Midori Koga at the University of Toronto. She teaches at the University of Toronto Piano Pedagogy Program and plays for the university as collaborative pianist and teaching assistant, for which she received the best teaching award in 2025. She also plays for Canada’s National Ballet School and runs a private teaching studio in Toronto. 

Born in 2003, pianist Ryan Jia has studied piano since the age of five. He is a recent UCLA graduate under the study of Dr. David Kaplan, and is now a student at the Manhattan School of Music with David Fung. He has also previously studied with Anna Semyanovsky and the late William Wellborn. 

An avid performer, he has concertized alongside numerous orchestras, with works by Bach, Moszkowski, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Former accomplishments also include first place at the 2025 Atwater Kent Piano Concerto Competition, second place of the Longer Works Division and winner of the “Best Performance of an Opera Paraphrase” at the 2024 Los Angeles Int’l Liszt Competition, and second place at the 2024-25 Culver City Symphony Parness Concerto Competition with his performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s second Piano Concerto.

 
Ryan has received masterclasses from world-renowned artists such as Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Christopher Harding and Ory Shihor. 

As a “Beverly Hills National Audition Recommended Artist”, he was also involved with the UCLA Gluck Fellows program, which offers free educational performances to over 150 schools, libraries, senior centers, and other nontraditional venues throughout Los Angeles. In his free time, he enjoys photography, watchmaking, and travel.

Niels Armand-Hasselweiler is a French pianist born in Lyon, whose musical journey began on the viola at the age of six before he turned his focus to the piano. He received a rigorous musical education at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Lyon, studying piano, composition, and collaborative piano. 

He pursued advanced training in both France and Germany at leading institutions, including the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, as well as the CRR de Paris for chamber music. His principal mentors include Momo Kodama, Éric Le Sage, Denis Pascal, Varduhi Yeritsyan and he has also worked with eminent artists such as, Anne Queffélec, Mikhaïl Voskresensky, François Dumont, Grigory Gruzman, Paavali Jumppanen and David Fray. 

Active as a soloist and chamber musician, Niels Armand-Hasselweiler performs regularly throughout Europe and appears at international festivals including the International Pau Casals Festival, the Salon-de-Provence Chamber Music Festival, the Prieuré de Chirens, and the Rendez-vous de Rochebonne. His musical collaborators include Éric Le Sage, Hervé Billaut, Florent Boffard, Masaya Kamei, and Yui Sakata. 

He is also artistic co-director of the Les Musicales du Haut-Allier Festival in France.