Thomas Adès studied composition and piano at the Guildhall School of Music and at King's College. He gained fame when his Chamber Symphony (1990) was created by the BBC Philharmonic in collaboration with the Ensemble Modern. Since then, he has been considered one of the leading composers of the younger generation.

He is in demand worldwide as a composer and conductor, playing with artists such as Ian Bostridge and the Belcea Quartet. As a conductor, he has appeared with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Radio France and the London Sinfonietta, among others.

He wrote his first opera, Powder Her Face (opus 14), at the request of the Almeida Opera (libretto by Philip Henscher). It premiered at the Cheltenham Festival in 1995 and was subsequently performed in London, Berkeley, Aspen Festival, Brisbane, New York and elsewhere.

Adès has won several prizes including the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize in 1997 and the Grawemeyer Award in 2000 for his composition Asyla, the Ernst von Siemens Prize for Young Composers (1999), and the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize in 2005 for The Tempest. He has also been artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival since 1999.