Thomas Adès

Thomas Adès born 1 March 1971

Thomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor.

London-born Adès studied piano and composition at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. After attending University College School, he graduated in 1992 from King's College, Cambridge. His degree was classified as 'double starred first', indicating outstanding academic distinction. He was made Britten Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2004 was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex.

In 2007 a retrospective festival of his work was presented at the Barbican Centre in London and he was the focus of Radio France's annual contemporary music festival, 'Présences' and Helsinki's 'Ultimo' festival. The Barbican festival, 'Traced Overhead: The Musical World of Thomas Ades', included the UK premiere of a new work for Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, Tevot.

In 1993, at the age of twenty-two, Adès gave his first public piano recital in London as part of the Park Lane Group series of recitals.

Asyla, for orchestra, was premiered in Symphony Hall, Birmingham in October 1997 by Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the 1997 BBC Proms. This work also received the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2000.
Adès conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the London premiere of the work while, in September 2002, Simon Rattle gave his first concert as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with Asyla and Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5, both of which have also been released on CD and DVD by EMI. Asyla has since been performed across the world, including on a recent tour of the Far East by Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Arcadiana, a seven-movement, 20-minute string quartet (Op. 12) was recorded in 1998 along with other work from the 1993 to 1994 period. America: a Prophecy was commissioned for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's Millennium Messages in November 1999 and it received its UK premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival in June 2000. Concentric Paths, Adès' violin concerto, received its premiere in September 2005 to critical acclaim.

Adès has composed two operas, Powder Her Face (1995) a chamber opera with a libretto by Philip Hensher, won both good reviews and notoriety for its musical depiction of fellatio. The opera was commissioned by Almeida Opera, and has since been given new productions by chamber opera groups around the world. The Duchess depicted in the opera is the notorious Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll whose scandalous behaviour in Britain in the early 1960s was revealed during her divorce trial with the introduction into evidence of photographs of her various sexual acts. The Tempest, adapted from Shakespeare's play, was premièred to critical acclaim at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in February 2004, followed by several productions around the world. The opera was revived by Covent Garden in March 2007 to great acclaim.

Adès was Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 1999-2008 and Musical Director of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. In 2000, he was composer-in-residence of the Ojai Festival in California (along with Mark-Anthony Turnage).

Adès is also a noted pianist, having been a runner-up in the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition in 1990.

He was resident with the Los Angeles Philharmonic during their 2005/6 and 2006/7 seasons as part of the orchestra's 'On Location' series.

In 2007 a retrospective festival of his work was presented at the Barbican Arts Centre in London and he was the focus of Radio France's annual contemporary music festival, 'Présences' and Helsinki's 'Ultimo' festival. The Barbican festival, 'Traced Overhead: The Musical World of Thomas Adès', included the UK premiere of a new work for Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, Tevot. In 2009, he was the focus of Stockholm Concert Hall's annual Composer Festival.

In 2006, he entered a civil partnership with Tal Rosner.

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein born 25 August 1918 (d. 1990)

Leonard Bernstein was an American conductor, composer, and pianist. He was the first conductor born in the US to receive world-wide acclaim, and is known for both his conducting of the New York and Berlin Philharmonics, including the acclaimed Young People's Concerts series, and his multiple compositions, including West Side Story, Candide and On The Town.

Bernstein was very highly regarded as a conductor, composer, and educator, and probably best known to the public as longtime music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, for conducting concerts by many of the world's leading orchestras, and for writing the music for West Side Story. He may well be more famous among the general public than any other conductor before or since. All told, he wrote three symphonies, two operas, five musicals, and numerous other pieces.

Throughout the 1960s, Leonard Bernstein was undoubtedly the most visible proponent of classical music in American culture. Through his outgoing personality and resourceful uses of the media, particularly television, Bernstein introduced 'highbrow' culture into the homes of middle America, while also defending rock and roll as 'real' music and espousing radical causes.

Given his overwhelming celebrity and acclaim as a composer, conductor, pianist, and lecturer, the meteoric career of this son of Russian Jewish immigrants would seem to exemplify the all-American success story; yet, for most of his life, the spectre of the closet lurked threateningly behind the glamorous and often brash public image of Leonard Bernstein.

In spite of Bernstein's public avowal of unpopular causes - he was outspoken on civil rights and Vietnam - he was, for much of his career, unwilling to risk exposure of his homosexuality. Indeed, the social mores of the 1950s and 1960s were such that a revelation of homosexuality would undoubtedly have destroyed the celebrity and influence he had attained.

In 1951, Bernstein married the Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre, with whom he had three children. Bernstein nonetheless engaged in a number of homosexual relationships over the years. In the mid-1970s, the couple separated, and Bernstein attempted to live an openly gay life with Tom Cochran, who had been his lover since 1971. A year later, he returned to his wife, who was by this time terminally ill.

After Montealegre's death in 1978, Bernstein became increasingly open about his gayness.

Bernstein's final major composition, the opera A Quiet Place (1983), positions a bisexual male character, who functions as the mediator between the other, more conflicted characters, at the centre of the action. The opera's message is one of reconciliation and acceptance among all people.

Although increasingly in ill health in his final years, Bernstein continued to perform and record until his death from a heart attack on October 14, 1990.

As a conductor, he had a vast repertoire and recorded frequently, often in collaboration with the greatest singers and solo musicians of the postwar era. As a result, he has left an extensive and remarkable legacy of recordings and video performances that will ensure his reputation as an intelligent and enthusiastic conductor, composer, and musician for generations to come.

Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas born 21 December 1944

Michael Tilson Thomas, aka MTT, is an American conductor, pianist, composer, and director of the San Francisco Symphony.

Tilson Thomas grew up in an artistic family - his grandparents, the Tomashevskys, were well known in Yiddish theatre. He attended the University of Southern California, where he studied composition, conducting, piano, and harpsichord.

After winning the Koussevitzky Prize at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in the summer of 1968, Tilson Thomas became the youngest assistant conductor in the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1969, he garnered great critical praise by conducting the second half of the symphony's New York concert after its musical director, William Steinberg, became ill.

From that point on, Tilson Thomas steadily rose in the world of classical music. He served as conductor of a number of prestigious orchestras, including as associate and principal guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1970-1974), as music director of the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra (1971-1979), and as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (1981-1985). In 1988, he became principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

In 1995 Tilson Thomas stepped down from his position at the LSO to become the music director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Not only has he impressed audiences with his musical vision, talented conducting, and prolific number of recordings, but he has also used his position to commission works by gay composers that use the medium of classical music to represent gay life and gay history.

Tilson Thomas has acknowledged that he is something of a maverick in the music world. Known for his dedication to innovative and inventive composers, he has persistently performed their works in the hope that he might expose his audiences to the wonderful diversity of classical music in the United States.

To this end, he organised the American Mavericks music festival in San Francisco in June 2000. The festival highlighted the works of such composers as Lou Harrison, Lukas Foss, Earle Brown, Steve Reich, David Del Tredici, and Meredith Monk.

Tilson Thomas has similarly pushed audiences to rethink the relationship between classical music and homosexuality by celebrating openly gay composers such as Harrison and by commissioning works from Del Tredici and others that explicitly explore the experiences of gay men and lesbians.

Although gay men and lesbians have long been present in the world of classical music, both as performers and as audience members, they have often remained invisible. Tilson Thomas has taken bold steps to change this.

In May 2001, Tilson Thomas conducted the premiere of Del Tredici's Gay Life, a series of pieces he commissioned that are based on poems by Allen Ginsberg, Thom Gunn, and Paul Monette. The work both explores the experiences of gay men in America and also delves into the challenges that gay men have faced in their struggle to survive the AIDS epidemic.

In addition, two of Tilson Thomas' own compositions have added to the small but growing classical music repertoire focused on gay subjects. Three Poems by Walt Whitman, written for baritone and orchestra, and We Two Boys Together Clinging, for baritone and piano, use Whitman's poetry to explore intimacy between men.

As a prominent American conductor, Tilson Thomas has displayed his mastery of tradition and his sense of musical adventure. His decision to live openly and his support of other gay musicians have enhanced his stature, both professionally and morally.

GLBTQ Encyclopedia profile by Geoffrey W. Bateman

He is also renowned for his interpretation of the works of Gustav Mahler, and since the death of Leonard Bernstein he is considered the world's premier interpreter of the works of Aaron Copland.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten born 22 November 1913 (d. 1976)

Lord Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, was a British composer, conductor, and pianist.

Britten was born in Lowestoft in Suffolk, the son of a dentist and a talented amateur musician. He began composing prolifically as a child, and was educated at Gresham's School. In 1927, he began private lessons with Frank Bridge. He also studied, less happily, at the Royal College of Music under John Ireland and with some input from Ralph Vaughan Williams. Although ultimately held back by his parents (at the suggestion of College staff), Britten had also intended to study with Alban Berg in Vienna. His first compositions to attract wide attention were the Sinfonietta (Op.1) and a set of choral variations A Boy was Born, written in 1934 for the BBC Singers.

The following year he met W H Auden with whom he collaborated on the song-cycle Our Hunting Fathers, radical both in politics and musical treatment, and other works. Of more lasting importance was his meeting in 1936 with the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become his musical collaborator and inspiration as well as the partner with whom he was to spend the rest of his life.

In early 1939, the two of them followed Auden to America. There Britten composed Paul Bunyan, his first opera (to a libretto by Auden), as well as the first of many song cycles for Pears; the period was otherwise remarkable for a number of orchestral works, including Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (for string orchestra), the Violin Concerto, and Sinfonia da Requiem (for full orchestra).

Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, Britten completing the choral works Hymn to Saint Cecilia (his last collaboration with Auden) and A Ceremony of Carols during the long sea voyage. He had already begun work on his opera Peter Grimes, and its premiere at Sadler's Wells in 1945 was his greatest success so far. However, Britten was encountering opposition from sectors of the English musical establishment and gradually withdrew from the London scene, founding the English Opera Group in 1947 and the Aldeburgh Festival the following year, partly (though not solely) to showcase his own works.

Grimes marked the start of a series of English operas, of which Billy Budd (1951) and The Turn of the Screw (1954) were particularly admired. These operas share common themes, with that of the 'outsider' particularly prevalent. Most feature such a character, excluded or misunderstood by society; often this is the protagonist, such as Peter Grimes and Owen Wingrave in their eponymous operas.

The greatest success of Britten's career was his War Requiem, written for the opening of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in 1962.

In the last decade or so of his life, Britten suffered from increasing ill-health and his late works became progressively more sparse in texture. They include the opera Death in Venice (1973), the Suite on English Folk Tunes 'A Time There Was' and Third String Quartet (1975), which drew on material from Death in Venice, as well as the dramatic cantata Phaedra (1976), written for Janet Baker.

Having previously refused a knighthood, Britten accepted a life peerage on 2 July 1976 as Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk. A few months later he died of heart failure at his house in Aldeburgh. He is buried in the churchyard there.