Thomas Adès

Thomas Adès, born in London in 1971, is among the most celebrated composers of his generation, a triple threat who is also a formidable pianist and conductor. He studied piano and composition, read music at King’s College, Cambridge, and emerged in the 1990s with a series of works whose technical command and vivid imagination made an immediate impression. His breakthrough came young: the orchestral work Asyla (1997), written for Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, won the Grawemeyer Award in 2000, making Adès its youngest-ever recipient. His operas have been particularly admired: Powder Her Face (1995), with its scandalous subject and dazzling score; The Tempest (2004), after Shakespeare; and The Exterminating Angel (2016), after Buñuel. The last two have both been staged at the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera. Adès’s music is marked by glittering, intricate orchestration, a fascination with dance rhythms and mechanical processes, harmonies that hover between tonality and dissonance, and a wit that can turn suddenly to menace or grief. He was artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 1999 to 2008 and later the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s first artistic partner, conducting both his own music and a wide repertoire, and he is often placed in the English line that runs through Britten.