Thomas Adès

Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès (born 1 March 1971) is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010). Major recent works include: Dante (2020) and Aquifer (2024). Biography Adès was born in London to art historian Dawn Adès and poet Timothy Adès. His surname is of Syrian Jewish origin. Adès is gay and identified his sexuality closely with the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in his youth. Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. After attending University College School, he achieved a double starred first in 1992 at King’s College, Cambridge, studying with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. He was appointed Britten Professor of Composition in the Royal Academy of Music and in 2004 was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex. In 2007, a retrospective festival of Adès’s work was presented at the Barbican Arts Centre in London and he was the focus of Radio France’s an