Timo Andres On Q2 Music's 'Spaces'

Connecticut-born composer-pianist Timo Andres likens his music to "walking into an interesting apartment and seeing a few things next to each other that tell you something about a person." At once familiar and modern, forward-looking and reverent, Andres's music tells the story of a composer striving to reconcile a fascination with the past and composers ranging from Mozart to Chopin to Brian Eno, with a stylish, pointillist craftsmanship all his own.

Andres discusses his "found sound" approach to composition, which begins as a dialogue with other music and develops from a tendency to "dissect the structure, remove the skeleton and fill in my own notes to the skeleton." Evocative chords — such as one from the second movement of Sibelius's Violin Concerto — can serve as a jumping-off point, something Andres is quick to illustrate at the piano.

His albums Shy and Mighty (2010) and Home Stretch (2013) demonstrate his exciting, idiosyncratic style of music-making and were met with critical acclaim.

For this opening episode of Season 2 of Q2 Spaces, Andres takes us on a tour of his sharply decorated apartment in Bed-Sty, Brooklyn, and shares stories of mushroom-hunting with his former teacher, Ingram Marshall, his ambivalence to the idea of musical heroes and how he could trace his whole persona back to Edward Gorey illustrations.