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"Writing music? It's like flying a plane"
Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano, composition and percussion at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and read music at King's College, Cambridge. In 1993 he made his recital début as pianist and composer at the Park Lane Group in London. Between 1993 and 1995 he was Composer in Association with the Hallé Orchestra,
Asyla (1997) was a Feeney Trust commission for Sir Simon Rattle and the CBSO, who toured it together, and repeated it at Symphony Hall in August 1998 in Rattle's last concert as Music Director. Rattle subsequently programmed Asyla in his opening concert as Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2002.
Adès’ first opera, Powder Her Face (commissioned by Almeida Opera for the Cheltenham Festival in 1995) was televised by Channel Four. Adès’ second opera, The Tempest, was commissioned by London's Royal Opera House and was premièred there in February 2004 and revived in 2007.
Among the festivals at which he has been the featured composer are Helsinki Musica Nova (1999), Salzburg Easter Festival (2004), Radio France's Présences, Paris (2007), the Barbican's 'Traced Overhead', London (2007), New Horizons Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia (2007), Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Festival (2009), Melbourne Festival (2010); in addition Carnegie Hall, New York, appointed him to the R and B Debs Composer Chair and featured him as composer, conductor and pianist throughout the 2007/8 season.
Adès is also a renowned interpreter of a range of music as conductor and pianist. He has recorded composers including Kurtág, Janácek, Nancarrow, Stanchinsky, Grieg, Busoni, Stravinsky, Schubert, Ruders and Berlioz, and premiered and widely performed several works by Gerald Barry. Orchestras he has conducted include City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Philharmonia, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Hallé Orchestra, BBC, Finnish, Dutch, Danish and North German Radio Symphony Orchestras, Melbourne Symphony, Sydney Symphony and ensembles such as Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern and the Athelas Ensemble, Copenhagen.
Adès’ music has attracted numerous awards and prizes, including the Grawemeyer Award (2000) of which he is the youngest-ever recipient. He is the only composer to have won the Royal Philharmonic Prize for Large-scale composition three times
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| 19-01-2012 |
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Thomas Adès - maestro
Toby Spence - tenor
Leila Josefowicz - violino Retrato Adès I - Thomas Adès
Three Studies after Couperin - Hector Berlioz
Les nuits d’été, op. 7 - Thomas Adès
Concerto para Violino - Jean Sibelius
Sinfonia nº 6, op. 104
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| Multi-talented composer, pianist and conductor Thomas Adès has established itself as one of the most celebrated English composers of our day. Simon Rattle commissioned from him in 1997 the first orchestral piece (Asyla) for the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The result was immediately a great enthusiasm for his creativity, calling to mind both the great masters of classical music - which Adès sees as "friends who are scary, but still friends "- as well as the bass rhythm of techno music. This concert starts the composer´s two-week residency at the Gulbenkian Música. |
| 22-01-2012 |
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Thomas Adès - maestro
Nicolas Hodges - piano
Tal Rosner - video Retrato Adès II - Ludwig van Beethoven
Sinfonia nº 6, op. 68, Pastoral - Thomas Adès
In Seven Days: Piano Concerto with moving image
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| In Seven Days is a piece especially dear to Thomas Adès. This is the composer's first collaboration with Israeli visual artist Tal Rosner, and joins an ambitious piano concerto to a hi-tech imagination. Based on the story of Creation in the Hebrew version, the piece was developed according to the perception Adès had of the composition being coupled to a ballet. Put simply, the place of the dancers is occupied by a series of videos. The accompnying work in this concert, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, is one that inspired Adès greatly. |
| 27/28-01-2012 |
Orquestra Gulbenkian
Thomas Adès - maestro Retrato Adès III - Thomas Adès
Asyla
Polaris: Voyage for Orchestra * - Hector Berlioz
Sinfonia Fantástica, op. 14
* Co-encomenda da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian |
"'Polaris' is the star of navigation that guides mariners, and the work is about this: magnetism in music."
These words of Thomas Adès summarize the content of this gigantic work, premiered by the New World Symphony Orchestra for the opening of the Frank Gehry Hall in Miami. Writing about Adès, the critic Andrew Porter has said "There's been nobody like him since Benjamin Britten." |
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