Thomas Adès


Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest, Violin Concerto, Tevot, In Seven Days, and Polaris. Major recent works include: Dante and Aquifer.

Biography

Adès was born in London to art historian Dawn Adès and poet Timothy Adès. His surname is of Syrian Jewish origin. Adès is gay and identified his sexuality closely with the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in his youth.
Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. After attending University College School, he achieved a double starred first in 1992 at King's College, Cambridge, studying with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. He was appointed Britten Professor of Composition in the Royal Academy of Music and in 2004 was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex.
In 2007, a retrospective festival of Adès's work was presented at the Barbican Arts Centre in London and he was the focus of Radio France's annual contemporary music festival, "Présences", and Helsinki's "Musica Nova" festival. The Barbican festival, "Traced Overhead: The Musical World of Thomas Adès", included the UK premiere of a new work for Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, Tevot. Journalist Tom Service wrote of the piece, "Of any piece of new music I've heard at its premiere, this is one of the most immediately, richly powerful." In the spring of 2007, The Tempest returned to the Royal Opera House.
In 2009 Adès was the focus of Stockholm Concert Hall's annual Composer Festival, and in 2010 he was made a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Five years later he was elected to the Board of Directors of the European Academy of Music Theatre. For 2022 Adès was awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Music and Opera. He won an Ivor Novello Award in 2023: his composition Növények, for mezzo-soprano and piano sextet, won for Best Chamber Ensemble Composition. In September 2024 Adès was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society's Gold Medal by Simon Rattle at the BBC Proms.

Compositions

Orchestral

;Asyla
;America: A Prophecy
;Concentric Paths
;Tevot
;In Seven Days
;Polaris
;Totentanz
;Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
;The Exterminating Angel Symphony
;''Air – Homage to Sibelius''

Operas

;Powder Her Face
;The Tempest
;''The Exterminating Angel''

Choral music

;''The Fayrfax Carol''

Chamber music

;Five Eliot Landscapes
;Arcadiana
;Cardiac Arrest
;Catch
;Chamber Symphony
;Concerto Conciso
;Court Studies
;Four Quarters
;Les baricades mistérieuses
;Lieux retrouvés
;Life Story
;Living Toys
;The Origin of the Harp
;''Piano Quintet''

Other musical activities

Pianist

In 1993, at age 22, Adès gave his first public piano recital in London as part of the Park Lane Group series of recitals.
Adès was a runner-up in the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition in 1990. EMI has released a CD of Adès as a solo performer, "Thomas Adès: Piano", and several CDs as an accompanist, frequently with Ian Bostridge, Steven Isserlis and others. As a student Adès was a percussionist, at one point playing percussion in Stravinsky's "Les noces" under Sir Simon Rattle.

Musical Director

Adès was the first music director of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group from 1998 to 2000.
He served as artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 1999 to 2008, succeeded in 2009 by the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
In 2000, he was composer-in-residence of the Ojai Festival in California, under the artistic direction of Ernest Fleischmann. While there, performances included:
  • The U.S. West Coast premiere of Asyla, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic
  • Darkness Visible" and "Still Sorrowing performed by pianist Gloria Cheng
  • These Premises are Alarmed conducted by Rattle with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
He was resident with the Los Angeles Philharmonic during their 2005/6 and 2006/7 seasons as part of the orchestra's "On Location" series at Walt Disney Concert Hall and other locations.
Adès is the Deborah and Philip Edmundson artistic partner with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held for three years, 2018/2019, 2019/2020, and 2020/2021. The position was created specifically for him.

Recordings

DVD
  • Powder Her Face was made into a film by Channel 4 and shown on Christmas Day 1999 in the UK. The film was released on DVD in the UK for Christmas 2005, including a documentary film about Adès made by Gerald Fox in 1999. It is also available in the US.
  • Asyla formed Sir Simon Rattle's opening concert as Music Director with the Berlin Philharmonic. The two concerts given were recorded and released as a DVD in 2002.
  • "The Tempest": the Metropolitan Opera production from 2012, conducted by Adès, was issued on DG. Prospero: Simon Keenlyside; Ariel: Audrey Luna; Caliban: Alan Oke; Miranda: Isabel Leonard; Ferdinand: Alek Shrader; King of Naples: William Burden; Antonio: Tony Spence; Stefano: Kevin Burdette; Trinculo: Iestyn Davies; Sebastian: Christopher Feigum; Gonzalo: John Del Carlo. The production was by Robert Lepage. Winner of the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.
Audio CD
as composer
  • Life Story
  • Living Toys
  • Asyla
  • Powder Her Face
  • America
  • Adès/Schubert: ''Piano Quintets
  • Violin Concerto, download release.
  • The Tempest
  • Tevot, Violin Concerto, Three Studies from Couperin, Dances from Powder Her Face
  • Thomas Adès: Anthology including Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face and Three Mazurkas
  • In Seven Days
  • Polaris, download release.
  • Lieux retrouvés
as performer