SPCO's Liquid Music Series Presents Timo Andres Work Songs This Weekend

Tonight, March 21, and Saturday, March 22, at the Music Room at SPCO Center, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music series presents composer and pianist Timo Andres, performing his new song cycle Work Songs with fellow composer-performers Gabriel Kahane, Ted Hearne, Becca Stevens and Nathan Koci.

Inspired by old-fashioned American parlor songs, Andres has crafted his own multi-movement set of "work songs" with texts gathered from artists who've written about and considered their own work and working process. Hailed by The New York Times as "a lively new voice in chamber music making," Andres strikes a balance between articulate, aggressive phrases and a broader, romantic lyricism in his music, a fusion that lends itself well to the vocal chamber music of Work Songs.

Andres is joined in his Twin Cities debut by Kahane, Hearne, Stevens and Koci, each musicians, composers, and friends of Andres'. Writing for such an ensemble has been a passion project for Andres, and Work Songs is tailored to the group's unique strengths, with singing, acoustic and electric guitar, keyboard, accordion and piano. The program will also include other works from each of the featured composer-performers, with support from the collective.

About his work, Andres commented, "Work Songs is written in the long tradition of people celebrating and lamenting their professions in song. The texts are drawn from artists writing about their own work, and by extension, about art in general-and set to music specifically for four of my favorite fellow musicians."

Liquid Music curator Kate Nordstrum has called Work Songs "a clear highlight of Liquid Music's 2013-14 season featuring some of the most interesting and powerful new voices in classical composition taking turns supporting and leading throughout what will surely be a very fun, surprising, and entertaining-for-everyone evening."

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