Thomas Adès

Thomas Adès's In Seven Days will be performed at Adès and Reich concerts at City Halls, Glasgow on Sunday 13 February 2011, Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall on Friday 18 February 2011 and Symphony Hall, Birmingham on Friday 11 March.

The Origin of the Harp by Thomas Adès is being performed at Adès and Barry at Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on Thursday 10th March 2011, 7:30pm.

Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and read music at King’s College, Cambridge. Between 1993 and 1995 he was Composer in Association with the Hallé Orchestra. Asyla (1997) was commissioned for Sir Simon Rattle and the CBSO, who toured it, and repeated it at Symphony Hall in August 1998 in Rattle’s last concert as Music Director. Asyla also appeared in Rattle’s opening concert as Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic in September 2002.

Adès’ first opera, Powder Her Face (1995), has been performed all round the world, televised by Channel Four, and is available on DVD and an EMI CD. Most of the composer’s music has been recorded by EMI.

Adès’ second opera, The Tempest, was commissioned by the Royal Opera House and was premièred there under the composer’s baton to great critical acclaim in February 2004. It has since been heard in Strasbourg, Copenhagen and Santa Fe. In February 2007 Radio France’s Présences Festival featured 23 Adès’ works. This showcase was followed by the Barbican’s festival ‘Traced Overhead’, giving the British premiere of Tevot, a Berlin Philharmonic commission. Later in the year Simon Rattle and his orchestra brought the piece to Carnegie Hall where the composer has a two-year Carnegie Hall residency. April 2008 saw the premiere of In Seven Days for piano, video and orchestra, when it made a great impact on a sold-out Royal Festival Hall.

Adès’ music has attracted numerous awards and prizes, including the Paris Rostrum for the best piece by a composer under 30 (The Origin of the Harp, 1994); the 1997 RPS Prize for Asyla; the Elise L Stoeger Prize for Arcadiana (New York, 1998); the Salzburg Easter Festival Prize (1999); the Munich Ernst von Siemens Prize for Young Composers (1999); the 2000 Grawemeyer Award for Asyla; the Hindemith Prize (2001), and the 2005 RPS Prize for The Tempest.

Photo © Maurice Foxall