Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès CBE (born March 1, 1971) is a British composer, pianist, and conductor. Five of Adès's compositions were selected in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest art music works from 2000 to 2017. These works include The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010). More recent works include Dante (2020) and Aquifer (2024).

Biography

Thomas Adès was born in London to Dawn Adès, an art historian, and Timothy Adès, a poet. His family name has roots in Syrian Jewish heritage. Adès is gay and, during his youth, he felt a strong connection to the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Adès began studying piano with Paul Berkowitz and later studied composition with Robert Saxton at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Before attending university, he went to University College School. In 1992, he earned the highest honors at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. He later became the Britten Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music. In 2004, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.

In 2007, a festival celebrating Adès’s work was held at the Barbican Arts Centre in London. He was also the focus of a music festival in France called "Présences" and another in Finland called "Musica Nova." The Barbican festival, titled "Traced Overhead: The Musical World of Thomas Adès," included the first performance in the United Kingdom of a new piece called Tevot, written for Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. A journalist named Tom Service described the piece as "one of the most powerful and emotionally rich pieces of new music I have ever heard." That same year, The Tempest returned to the Royal Opera House.

In 2009, Adès was the center of attention at Stockholm Concert Hall’s annual Composer Festival. In 2010, he became a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Five years later, he joined the Board of Directors of the European Academy of Music Theatre. In 2022, he was awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Music and Opera. In 2023, he received an Ivor Novello Award for his composition Növények, which was written for a mezzo-soprano and piano sextet and 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.

Other musical activities

In 1993, at age 22, Adès performed his first public piano recital in London as part of the Park Lane Group series of recitals.

Adès came in second place in the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition in 1990. EMI released a CD of Adès as a solo performer, titled "Thomas Adès: Piano," and several CDs as an accompanist, often with Ian Bostridge, Steven Isserlis, and others. As a student, Adès played percussion, including a role in Stravinsky's "Les noces" under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle.

Adès was the first music director of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group from 1998 to 2000.

He was the artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 1999 to 2008. In 2009, the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard took over this role.

In 2000, Adès was composer-in-residence at the Ojai Festival in California, along with Mark-Anthony Turnage, under the direction of Ernest Fleischmann. During this time, performances included:
• The U.S. West Coast premiere of Asyla, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle with 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

Adès was a resident artist 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 venues.

Adès holds the position of Deborah and Philip Edmundson artistic partner with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has held this role for three seasons: 2018/2019, 2019/2020, and 2020/2021. This position was created specifically for him.

Recordings

• The opera Powder Her Face was turned into a movie by Channel 4 and aired on Christmas Day 1999 in the UK. The movie was released on DVD in the UK for Christmas 2005, including a documentary about Adès made by Gerald Fox in 1999. It is also available in the United States.
• Asyla, along with Mahler's 5th Symphony, was part of Sir Simon Rattle's first concert as Music Director with the Berlin Philharmonic. The two concerts were recorded and released as a DVD in 2002.
• The Metropolitan Opera production of The Tempest from 2012, conducted by Adès, was released by DG. The cast included Simon Keenlyside as Prospero, Audrey Luna as Ariel, Alan Oke as Caliban, Isabel Leonard as Miranda, Alek Shrader as Ferdinand, William Burden as King of Naples, Toby Spence as Antonio, Kevin Burdette as Stefano, Iestyn Davies as Trinculo, Christopher Feigum as Sebastian, and John Del Carlo as Gonzalo. The production was directed by Robert Lepage. It won the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.

• Life Story (1997)
• Living Toys (1998)
• Asyla (1999)
• Powder Her Face (1999)
• America (2004)
• Adès/Schubert: Piano Quintets (2005)
• Violin Concerto (2007), available as a download
• The Tempest (2009)
• Tevot, Violin Concerto, Three Studies from Couperin, Dances from Powder Her Face (2010)
• Thomas Adès: Anthology (2011), including Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face and Three Mazurkas
• In Seven Days (Signum Classics, Nicholas Hodges, Rolf Hind, Thomas Adès, 2011)
• Polaris (2012), available as a download
• Lieux retrouvés (Hyperion, Steven Isserlis, Thomas Adès, 2012)
• Thomas Adès Dante (Nonesuch, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, 2023)

• Cello World (with Steven Isserlis) (1998)
• Thomas Adès: Piano (2000)
• Janáček: The Diary of One Who Disappeared (with Ian Bostridge) (2002)
• The Music of Poul Ruders, vol. 4 (2004)
• Stravinsky: Complete Music for Violin and Piano (Hyperion, Thomas Adès/Anthony Marwood, 2010)