Thomas Adès Conductor

© Marco Borggreve

Biography

Born in London in 1971, composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Adès studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and music at King's College Cambridge.

His chamber opera Powder Her Face (1995) has been performed worldwide, while The Tempest (2004), commissioned and premiered by London's Royal Opera House, has since been revived by numerous international houses. His third opera, based on Luis Buñuel's L'Ange exterminateur, premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 2016, before being presented in London, New York, Copenhagen and Paris. In 2021, Dante, his first score written specifically for dance, premiered as part of The Dante Project at London's Royal Opera House.

Between 1993 and 1995, Thomas Adès was associate composer with the Hallé Orchestra, producing These Premises Are Alarmed for the opening of Bridgewater Hall in 1996. Asyla (1997) was composed for the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In 2005, he premiered his Violin Concerto Concentric Paths. His chamber music includes the clarinet quintet Alchymia (2021), two string quartets Arcadiana (1994) and The Four Quarters (2010), a Piano Quintet (2000) and Lieux retrouvés (2009) for cello and piano. His orchestral works include Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), Polaris (2011) and Totentanz for mezzo-soprano, baritone and large orchestra (2013).

As a conductor, Thomas Adès appears regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw and the Finnish Radio Orchestra. He was the first artistic partner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with whom he premiered a Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in 2019. Other recent works include Dawn, a Chacony for Orchestra at Any Distance (2020), Shanty-over the Sea for strings (2020), Märchentänze for solo violin and piano / orchestra (2021), Air-Homage to Sibelius for violin and orchestra (2022). From 2023 to 2025, Thomas Adès is composer-in-residence at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

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