Art of Piano 2027

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.

Celebrated as “exquisite” by the Philadelphia Inquirer and a “pianist of exceptional talent” by Gramophone, Grammy Award–winning pianist Michelle Cann is one of the most sought-after artists of her generation. Recent engagements include appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the São Paulo Municipal Symphony Orchestra. She has received the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and was the inaugural Christel DeHaan Artistic Partner of the American Piano Awards.

Highlights of Cann’s 2025–2026 season include performances with the Colorado Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. She also gives the world premiere of a new piano concerto by Valerie Coleman with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Her recital engagements include Stanford Live, Music Toronto, Chamber Music Detroit, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Spivey Hall, and a recital tour in China.

Recognized as one of the leading interpreters of Florence Price’s piano music, Cann gave the New York premiere of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra in 2016. Her recording of the concerto with the New York Youth Symphony won a Grammy Award in 2023 for Best Orchestral Performance. She won another Grammy Award in 2025 for Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, recorded with soprano Karen Slack, featuring 19 previously unpublished songs by Price. Her acclaimed debut solo album, Revival, featuring works by Price and Margaret Bonds, was released in 2023.

Cann holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and an artist diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music. She joined the piano faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2020 as the first holder of the Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies, and she also teaches piano at the Manhattan School of Music.

Image by Titilayo Ayangade.

Described as ‘a brilliant light in the music world,’ Joanna MacGregor CBE is one of the world's most innovative musicians, appearing as a concert pianist, curator and conductor. As Dame Myra Hess Chair of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and Professor of University of London, she is Head of an international piano department of young pianists from all over the world, many of whom have gone on to great success in the Van Cliburn, Leeds and Sydney International Piano Competitions. She also runs two annual Piano Festivals at the Royal Academy of Music, and curates a year-round recital series at the Wigmore Hall for Academy pianists. As a solo artist Joanna has performed in over eighty countries and appeared with many eminent conductors – Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Ilan Volkov, Sir Simon Rattle and Michael Tilson Thomas amongst them – and orchestras, including the London Symphony and Sydney Symphony orchestras, Chicago, Melbourne and Oslo Philharmonic orchestras, Berlin Symphony Orchestra and Salzburg Camerata. She has premiered many landmark compositions, and performs regularly at major venues throughout the world, including Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre and Barbican Centre in London, Sydney Opera House, Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. A regular broadcaster on TV and radio, she has made numerous appearances at the BBC Proms. Joanna has been the Artistic Director of Dartington Summer School and Bath International Music Festival, and curated the multi-arts Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House, as well as Aventures+, an orchestral series for Luxembourg Philharmonie. Joanna made her conducting debut in 2002 and has directed the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Liverpool Philharmonic, Britten Sinfonia, Manchester Camerata and the Hallé; she is the Music Director of the Brighton Philharmonic, presenting bold, innovative concerts in their centenary year.  

A 2020 cycle of the complete Beethoven sonatas at Canterbury Festival was followed in 2023 by an immersive series of Schubert recitals. The 2024-25 season sees Joanna performing in Europe, Scandinavia, China, US and Canada. She has released over forty solo recordings - many of them on her own award-winning record label SoundCircus - ranging from Chopin and Piazzolla to Bach and John Cage. Her collaborative and composition projects encompass jazz, film, visual art, contemporary dance and electronica, and includes music for forty-seven silent Sherlock Holmes films with the BFI. From 2015-2021 she chaired the Paul Hamlyn Composers Awards and has been a Booker Prize Judge. Joanna MacGregor has five honorary doctorates in music; her bestselling series of books for children, PianoWorld, is hailed as ‘a new series for the Millenium.’ 

David Kaplan, pianist, has been called “excellent and adventurous” by The New York Times, and praised by the Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. As orchestra soloist, he has appeared with the Britten Sinfonia at London’s Barbican, Das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin at the Philharmonie, and with the Symphony Orchestras of Hawaii and San Antonio. As recitalist, he has performed at the Ravinia Festival, Sarasota Opera House, Music on Main in Vancouver, Strathmore, Washington’s National Gallery, and New York’s Carnegie and Merkin Halls.

Kaplan has consistently drawn critical acclaim for programs that creatively interweave classical, contemporary, and newly commissioned works. As a guest artist of Piano Spheres at Los Angeles’ Zipper Hall, he recently premiered “Quasi una Fantasia,” a program exploring the gray area between composition and improvisation through works by Anthony Cheung, Christopher Cerrone, and Andrea Casarrubios, together with Couperin, Beethoven, Schumann, Saariaho, Ligeti, and his own improvisations. Kaplan’s “New Dances of the League of David,” a recital infusing Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze with 16 new works by composers including Augusta Read Thomas, Marcos Balter, Caroline Shaw, and Andrew Norman was cited among the “Best Classical Music Performances of 2015” by The New York Times. The “New Dances” album was released in 2024 on the New Focus label, immediately garnering raves in Gramophone, Fanfare, and the Financial Times.

Balancing solo performances with meaningful collaborations, Kaplan has played with the Attacca, Ariel, Enso, Hausman, and Tesla String Quartets. As a core member of Decoda, the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall, he performs frequently in New York’s most exciting venues, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to National Sawdust, as well as creating innovative residencies as far away as Abu Dhabi, Mexico, and Scotland. The ensemble’s self-titled debut album was recorded at Tippet Rise Art Center, and has been nominated for a 2024 GRAMMY for the premiere recording of Valerie Coleman’s “Revelry,” originally composed for Decoda in 2018.  

He is a veteran of numerous distinguished chamber music festivals and series, such as the Seattle Chamber Music, La Jolla, Bard, and Mostly Mozart Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, and Barge Music. He is an alumnus of Tanglewood and the Ravinia-Steans Institute, and performs regularly as an alumnus of the Perlman Music Program, including with Itzhak Perlman at Miami’s Arsht Center. He serves as Co-Artistic Director of Lyrica Chamber Music, a community series in Morris County, NJ currently in its 36th season.

In addition to last year’s debut solo album, Kaplan has recorded for Naxos and Marquis Records, as well as for Nonesuch as part of his longstanding duo with pianist/composer Timo Andres. Performing often with his wife, flutist Catherine Gregory, the duo released “Vent” in 2023 on Bright Shiny Things, including music by Gabriela Lena Frank, David Lang, Mr. Andres, Schubert, and Prokofiev.

Kaplan was a student of the late Claude Frank, and previously studied with Walter Ponce and Miyoko Lotto. His mentors over the years have included Anton Kuerti, Richard Goode, and Emanuel Ax. He studied conducting at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Lutz Köhler, under the auspices of a Fulbright Fellowship from 2008-2010. The recipient of a DMA from Yale University in 2014, Kaplan earned his Bachelor from UCLA, where he has also served on the faculty since 2016, and now is the Associate Professor and Inaugural Shapiro Family Chair in Piano Performance.

David is proud to be a Yamaha/Bösendorfer Artist, and when at home in Los Angeles, he enjoys practicing on his childhood piano, a 1908 Hamburg Steinway model A. Away from the keyboard, he loves cartooning and cooking, and is mildly obsessed with classic cars. 

Nicolas Namoradze is a visionary pianist and composer known for his innovative artistry. He came to international attention in 2018 upon winning the triennial Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, Canada. A Musical America New Artist, BBC Music Magazine Rising Star and Gramophone One to Watch, he was bestowed the Pianist of the Year Award by the UK Critics’ Circle in 2022. His recordings have received accolades including the Choc de Classica, Instrumental Disc of the Month in BBC Music Magazine, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and Presto Classical. Now an exclusive Ondine recording artist, his first album with the label features Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata and his own solo piano arrangement of the Grosse Fuge.

Highlights of the 2026/27 season include recitals at the Konzerthaus Dortmund, Wigmore Hall, Munich’s Prinzregententheater, Tokyo’s Triphony Hall and Taipei’s National Concert Hall, residencies at the Banff Centre and the Sarasota, Honens and Tonebase Festivals. The season also sees major composition premieres, including a co-commission by Wigmore Hall and the BBC.
Recent seasons have included recitals at Carnegie Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, residencies with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Verbier Festival and Dresdner Philharmonie, and concerto performances with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Sinfonieorchester Basel and RAI Symphony Orchestra.
Born in Tbilisi, Georgia and raised in Budapest, Namoradze studied in Budapest, Vienna, Florence, New York and London. He now serves on the faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center and deputizes at The Juilliard School.