Thomas Adès & Pekka Kuusisto

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); and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2019).  His compositions also include numerous celebrated chamber and solo works.

September 2023 saw Thomas Adès conduct the Gewandhausorchester as part of his two-season residency with the ensemble which sees him appear as a conductor, pianist and composer in various concert formats. This autumn Thomas also began a two-season residency with the Hallé orchestra, which sees him conduct two orchestral concerts and curate a chamber programme. For the first appearance on 28 October, Thomas conducted the UK premiere of Tower, as well as the first UK concert performance of his ballet Purgatorio, alongside his Märchentänze for violin and orchestra with Anthony Marwood, which received its UK premiere at last year’s BBC Proms.

Thomas Adès has been the Artistic Partner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2016 and he conducts the orchestra every year in Boston and at Tanglewood. He also regularly coaches Piano and Chamber Music at the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove. 

As conductor, Thomas appears regularly with the Los Angeles and London Philharmonic orchestras, the Boston, London, BBC, Finnish Radio and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouworkest, Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, Rome. In opera, in addition to The Exterminating Angel, he has conducted The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Opera House and Zürich Opera, and the premieres of three operas by Gerald Barry, including the Los Angeles world premieres of The Importance of Being Earnest and Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, of which he also gave the European premiere at Covent Garden. Recent highlights include Thomas’s debut concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic and his conducting debut with the Berlin Philharmonic. In Summer 2022 he conducted the world premiere of Air for violin and orchestra at the Lucerne Festival, a Roche commission for Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra. 

His CD recording of The Tempest from the Royal Opera House (EMI) won the Contemporary category of the 2010 Gramophone Awards; his DVD of the production from the Metropolitan Opera was awarded the Diapason d'Or de l'année (2013), Best Opera recording (2014 Grammy Awards) and Music DVD Recording of the Year (2014 ECHO Klassik Awards).

His piano engagements have included solo recitals at Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium) in New York and the Wigmore Hall in London, and concerto appearances with the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra. Recent piano releases include an album of solo piano music by Janáček and a live album of Winterreise with Ian Bostridge. His solo disc of Janáček’s piano music won the 2018 Janáček medal.

He is also a Collaborative Partner of the San Francisco Symphony, and Artistic Best Friend of Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. In season 20/21 Pekka Kuusisto is Artist in Residence with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt with whom he will appear as soloist, conductor and chamber musician. He is also In-Residence at Milton Court at the Barbican, which culminates in a concert with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra.

Kuusisto is an enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music and a gifted improviser and regularly engages with people across the artistic spectrum. Uninhibited by conventional genre boundaries and noted for his innovative programming, recent projects have included collaborations with Hauschka and Kosminen, Dutch neurologist Erik Scherder, pioneer of electronic music Brian Crabtree, eminent jazz-trumpeter Arve Henriksen, juggler Jay Gilligan, accordionist Dermot Dunne and folk artist Sam Amidon. In the coming season he will premiere new concerti by Bryce Dessner, Djuro Zivkovic and Enrico Chapela and chamber works by Sauli Zinovjev and Calliope Tsoupaki. He also performs other concertos written for him including Daníel Bjarnason’s Violin Concerto, Anders Hillborg’s Bach Materia and Nico Muhly’s violin concerto, Shrink. In recent seasons Kuusisto has premiered new works by Sauli Zinovjev, Anders Hillborg, Philip Venables and Andrea Tarrodi. He also tours around the world with orchestras such as Chicago and Los Angeles symphony orchestras, Concertgebouworkest, Orchestre de Paris, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia, as well as Tapiola Sinfonietta, and the Australian, Scottish and Swedish chamber orchestras.

Kuusisto has released several recordings, notably for Ondine and BIS. He has recently recorded Ades’ Violin Concerto with Aurora and Nicolas Collon for Deutsche Grammophon, Hillborg’s Bach Materia and Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos.3 and 4 with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard for BIS and Daniel Bjarnason’s Violin Concerto with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra with the composer conducting for Sono Luminus. Past releases include Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Noesis concerto for violin and orchestra for Ondine and Sebastian Fagerlund’s violin concerto Darkness in Light for BIS, both recorded with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu.