Thomas Adès

The British composer, conductor, and pianist Thomas Adès, who was born in London in 1971, studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and composition with Robert Saxton at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama; he completed his studies with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway at King’s College, Cambridge. Adès gained international recognition with his ensemble work Living Toys, which earned him the Paris Rostrum in 1994. His chamber opera Powder Her Face followed in 1995 and, along with his music dramas The Tempest (2004) and The Exterminating Angel (2016) and his ballet The Dante Project (2020), has been staged widely. More than any other work, Asyla, premiered in 1997 by Sir Simon Rattle, established his international reputation and earned him the Grawemeyer Award. Adès’s orchestral works have been premiered by the New York, Berlin and Los Angeles Philharmonics and by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 2022 he served as composer-in-residence at Lucerne Festival, where he premiered his Roche Commission Air for violin and orchestra, written for Anne-Sophie Mutter. As a conductor, Adès also interprets the works of other composers and has led the Philharmonia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. In the 2025-26 season, he holds the Creative Chair at the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. In early May, he gave a masterclass in composition and conducting in Budapest as part of the celebrations marking György Kurtág’s 100th birthday. As an opera conductor, Adès has appeared at the Royal Opera House in London, the Metropolitan Opera, Opernhaus Zürich, the Vienna State Opera, the Opéra national de Paris, and the Los Angeles Opera. As a pianist, he has performed at Carnegie Hall in New York and at Wigmore Hall in London. Thomas Adès received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize in 2017 and, in 2021, the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award.

Thomas Adès made his first Lucerne Festival appearance in 2002 as a composer.

March 2026