ThomasAdès CBE
- Conductor
- Piano


About Thomas
Thomas Adès' compositions include three operas: he conducted the premiere of the most recent, The Exterminating Angel, at the 2016 Salzburg Festival and subsequently at the Metropolitan Opera, New York and the Royal Opera House, London. He conducted the premiere and revival of The Tempest at the Royal Opera House, and a new production at The Metropolitan Opera, Wiener Staatsoper and in November 2022 at La Scala, Milan. Thomas led the world premiere of his full-evening ballet TheDante Project at Covent Garden, and conducted it in May 2023 at the Opéra Garnier, Paris. He conducted a new production of The Exterminating Angel, featuring a critically acclaimed staging from Calixto Bieito, in spring 2024 at the Opéra Bastille in Paris.
He frequently leads performances of his orchestral works: Asyla (1997); Tevot (2007); Polaris (2010); Violin Concerto Concentric Paths (2005); In Seven Days for piano and orchestra (2008); Totentanz for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and orchestra (2013); the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2019). Other recent works include Shanty – over the Sea for strings (2020); Märchentänze for solo violin and piano and a separate version with orchestra (2021), Air – Homage to Sibelius for violin and orchestra, a Roche commission for Anne-Sophie Mutter (2022) & Aquifer an orchestral work commissioned by the Symphoniorchester des Bayerischen Runfunk, with support from Carnegie Hall and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien.
The 2025/26 season will see Thomas debut with the Swedish Radio Symphony & Gürzenich-Orchester Köln. Return engagements will include the BBC Symphony (Proms), London Symphony, The Hallé, Czech Philharmonic, Concertgebouworkest, New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France & Vienna Radio Symphony. Thomas will also serve as the Creative Chair of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich for the 25/26 season & celebrate the 100th birthday of György Kurtág at the Budapest Music Centre.
Contact
General Enquiries, Logistics & Press

Adam Brady
Representation
General Management with Askonas Holt, in collaboration with Angela Dixon
Partner Managers:
Alec Treuhaft (North America)
Publisher: Faber Music
Season Highlights
Video
- Playing
Thomas Adès on Sibelius and Ives
Credit: The Cleveland Orchestra
2024 GRAMMYs | Red Carpet Interview
In this exclusive interview, THOMAS ADÈS checks in live from the red carpet at the 2024 GRAMMYs. Credit: Recording Academy / GRAMMYs
Interview with Thomas Adès, winner of the 15th Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Music and Opera
Credit: BBVA Foundation
The UK premiere of Thomas Adès's "Polaris"
Credit: Victor Alexander
Photos
News
Press
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbican CentreNov 2024Symphonies by Beethoven, the First and the Fourth, topped and tailed the concert. With such a demanding work as the centrepiece of the programme they could have been routinely efficient performances, but these were anything but routine. The First in particular was transformed by the urgency with which Adès approached it, every rhythm pin-point sharp, every dynamic contrast fiercely underlined, to leave the symphony’s Haydnesque beginnings far behind, while the Fourth was disarmingly witty and exhilarating, with superb solo woodwind playing (from the flute and bassoon especially), and faultlessly crisp strings.
- The Guardian
- 01 November 2024
Adès, Leith, Tippet / Hallé
Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterApr 2024Adès prefaced Tevot with Elgar’s Sospiri, drawing almost symphonic intensity from what is at first sight just a salon piece, but then demonstrated that his own work has a power that really deserves the word symphonic. Played as magnificently as this, Tevot becomes an immense statement, whichfollows its own irrefutable musical logic while also seeming – for me at least – to conjure up echoes of late Mahler (of the 10th symphony especially); it’s undoubtedly one of Adès’s finest achievements.
- The Guardian
- 07 April 2024
Conducted by Thomas Adès, the Hallé Orchestra threw everything at this concert — and I don’t just mean the huge array of bells, vast and small, assembled for Oliver Leith’s new piece. That came as the climax to a stupendous first half that must have left the players gasping for their interval beverage. And they still had an intense miniature by Elgar (the tiny but tragically hued Sospiri) and Adès’s own 2007 masterpiece Tevot to come. Concerts like this renew one’s faith in the ability of British orchestras not just to survive but to flourish, startle and exhilarate even in these problematic times. Adès’s Tevot also requires a vast orchestra, especially in the jangling percussion department, but it’s a very different piece: a 20-minute epic in which a dark mass of sound seems to journey through storms of high-frequency, high-velocity clouds before reaching a point of ethereal beauty and comparative repose. The title has Hebrew biblical connotations, referencing Noah’s ark and the infant Moses’s basket; hearing it at the present time certainly made one reflect on the need for safe passages through times of turmoil.
- The Times
- 08 April 2024
Adès, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius / London Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Festival Hall, LondonFeb 2023 - Feb 2023If the illustrative music on display wasn’t vivid enough, further attack came from Adès’s exceedingly physical podium manner.
- The Times
- 23 February 2023
Thomas Adès’ "Tempest" Symphony proved a shapely and gorgeous precis of his 2004 opera in a concert conducted by the composer himself. Tchaikovsky’s “Fantasy after Dante” Francesca da Rimini made a rip-roaring end to the concert, the orchestra at full throttle, and Adès steadily ratcheting up the excitement.
- The Guardian
- 23 February 2023
Adès drew characterful playing from the LPO, especially fine in the sparsely-scored Berceuse and Ariel’s Song. Sections like The Feast demonstrate Adès’ vivid orchestrational mastery, harp, piano and glockenspiel tickling the ear as Ariel conjures up a feast for the shipwreck survivors. Tchaikovsky’s "Francesca da Rimini" was given an impulsive, no holds barred reading that saw Adès driving the LPO at full throttle.
- Bachtrack
- 23 February 2023
"The Dante Project" / The Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House, LondonOct 2021 - Oct 2021It is Adès’s score (which the composer conducts) that really sets the tone. Full of riches, it shimmers, growls and rumbles, glints and slides. In Inferno he’s definitely in the devil-has-the-best-tunes camp, sometimes soaring into Romanticism, sometimes rollicking like a night at the circus. It’s so far from the kind of music McGregor usually choreographs and it forces new invention, making dance to relish, more classical than usual in places, but also more characterful, even comical.
- The Guardian
- 15 October 2021
The real triumph of the evening is Adès’s score, which the composer conducts himself. It’s a sweeping work of fantastic orchestral colours and intense contemporary drama, yet harking back to a romantic age and not afraid to be playful and melodic when called for.
- The Times
- 15 October 2021
"Winterreise" CD
w/ Ian BostridgeAug 2019 - Aug 2019Right from the footstep tread launching the first song, Adès’s piano accompaniment never falters in its imaginative response to imagery and emotional mood, sometimes acting in counterpoint, sometimes allied. Frozen teardrops? A barking dog? The leaves on a tree? We see them in sound. Elsewhere, it’s their sheer detachment that make Adès’s notes so devastating, helping to build the cycle’s mounting atmosphere of desolation — one unresolved by the organ-grinder’s cryptic appearance in the final song.
- The Times
- 16 August 2019
Adès and Gerstein piano duo
Jordan Hall, BostonMar 2019 - Mar 2019Ravel’s “La Valse,” the final piece, was the concert’s high point. The two were at their mind-melded best, bewitching in their rendition of the dreamy, sumptuous waltz and the grotesque currents of darkness that grasped it, conjuring up a danse macabre for a world whirling off its axis.
- The Boston Globe
- 09 March 2019