Thomas Adès

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Thomas Adès (born in London, 1 March 1971) is a British composer. He is Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival, Music Director of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Britten Professor at the Royal Academy of Music.

Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School, London. He graduated in 1992 from King's College, Cambridge after studying with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. His degree was classified as "double-starred first", indicating outstanding academic distinction.

Adès's first opus, Five Eliot Landscapes, was published in 1990. He was twenty-two in 1993 when he gave his first public piano recital in London, setting in motion a chain of events which would catapult him to his current position at the heart of the British music scene. In 1995 his chamber opera Powder Her Face won both good reviews and notoriety for its musical depiction of fellatio. Powder Her Face was made into a film by Channel 4 and shown on Christmas Day 1999 in the UK. The film was released on DVD for Christmas 2005, including a documentary film about Adès made by Gerald Fox at around the same time.

Asyla, for orchestra, was premiered in Symphony Hall, Birmingham in October 1997 by Simon Rattle and the CBSO. At the 1999 BBC Proms Adès conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the London premiere of Asyla. On September 7, 2002 Simon Rattle gave his first concert as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with Thomas Adès' Asyla and Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5, performances which received rave reviews from the press worldwide and were recorded onto CD and DVD by EMI. Asyla has since been performed across the world, including on a recent tour of the Far East by Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Adès completed a commission, America: a Prophecy, for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's Millennium Messages in November 1999 and the piece received its UK premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival in June 2000. A recording of America: a Prophecy is available on EMI Classics (2004).

His most recent opera The Tempest which was adapted from the Shakespeare play was premièred to critical acclaim at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in February 2004, followed by a production at the Copenhagen Opera House in November 2005. It will be staged by the Santa Fe Opera in July/August 2006.

He has recently released a new CD on EMI with the Arditti and Belcea Quartets, performing his new Piano Quintet with Schubert's Trout Quintet as its companion. His violin concerto, Concentric Paths, received its premiere with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with Anthony Marwood as solist, in September 2005 to great critical acclaim.

In addition to his work as a composer, he is a noted pianist, able to perform Conlon Nancarrow's Three Canons for Ursula, which he arranged himself from player piano. The complexity of the piece demands that the player perform canons in time ratios such as 7:11:15. EMI has released a CD of Adès as a solo performer called "Thomas Adès:Piano" and several CDs as an accompanist, frequently with Ian Bostridge, Steven Iserlis and others.

In 2007 a retrospective festival of his work will be performed at the Barbican Centre in London. The festival will include the UK premiere of a new work for Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic called The Ark. In the same year The Tempest will return to the Royal Opera House.

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