thomas adés nytimes profile

G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

British composer phenom Thomas Adés (age 37) is presenting a concert of his music at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group on Friday, March 29th. The New York Times’ Vivien Schweitzer writes this article about his background and ethos in today’s edition of the paper. Here are a few of my favorite observations from the article:

“We never seem to get over looking for the next Benjamin Britten,” said Robert Saxton, an English composer who taught Mr. Adès at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. “It’s a stupid game. It’s an English disease that goes with the class system, and I’m not surprised that Tom has been pushed into that position.”

and

… His father is a linguist and translator, and his mother, Dawn Adès, an authority on Surrealist art. “It’s the only ‘ism’ that I feel at all comfortable with,” Mr. Adès said. “Writing and playing music at all is completely surreal. You are sort of sculpting in air, which gives you complete freedom to do what you want.”

and

… Mr. Adès often favors programmatic titles; others include “These Premises Are Alarmed,” applied to a particularly rambunctious work, another example of his ability to combine a seemingly endless range of beguiling sonorities.

“Sometimes I think, ‘Shall I just call it Sonata and have done with it?’ ” he said. “But then, of course, the trouble is that that can be a little bit blah. And then people are liable to say, ‘Oh, it’s Neo-Classical,’ and bang, you have a label, and that’s very damaging. It had a damaging effect on how some of Stravinsky’s greatest music was received for a long time, as people thought there was a going backward involved.”

I’ve been very taken with those works of his that I’ve been able to hear on recording so far, including Asyla, the string quartet Arcadiana, and the Piano Quintet.