Thomas Adès was born in London in 1971. 

His compositions include three operas: the most recent, The Exterminating Angel, received a new production at the Paris Opera in 2024. Adès conducted the première of this work at the Salzburg Festival in 2016, and that of his second opera, The Tempest, at the Royal Opera House in 2004. He also conducted a new production of The Tempest in Quebec (2012), and at New York’s Metropolitan Opera (2014), the Wiener Staatsoper (2012, 2024), and Milan’s La Scala (2022). Adès also conducted the world première of his full-length ballet, Dante, at the Royal Opera House in 2021, and in 2023 at the Palais Garnier, with Ballet de Paris.

Adès’s CD and DVD recordings have won multiple awards, including the GRAMMY® for Best Opera Recording for The Tempest in 2012. His orchestral works include Asyla (1997), Tevot (2007), Polaris (2010), the 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), and Aquifer (2024). Adès has also written many celebrated solo and chamber works.

October 2024 saw Adès conduct the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra as part of his two-season residency with the ensemble. In autumn 2023, he also began a two-season residency with The Hallé. For his first appearance, he conducted the UK première of Tower, the first UK concert performance of his ballet Purgatorio, and his Märchentänze for Violin and Orchestra with Anthony Marwood. As a conductor, Adès appears regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, the London, BBC, Finnish Radio, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He recently made débuts with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, and conducted the world première of Air—Homage to Sibelius with Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra at the Lucerne Festival. Adès has been the Artistic Partner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2016.

Adès’s piano engagements have included solo recitals at Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium) and the Wigmore Hall in London, and concerto appearances with the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra.

He has recorded an album of Janáček’s solo piano works, and in 2018 was awarded the Janáček medal.

Adès was made CBE in the late Queen’s 2018 Birthday Honours Awards.

From Bach to Adès, pianist Kirill Gerstein’s playing is distinguished by a ferocious technique and discerning intelligence, matched with an energetic, imaginative musical presence that places him at the top of the international profession. 

In the 2023/24 season, Gerstein was featured as a Spotlight Artist with the London Symphony Orchestra, performing four concerti across the season at the orchestra’s Barbican Centre home and on tour. In recital, he reprised Thomas Adès’s Suite from The Tempest with Christian Tetzlaff, with premières in New York, Washington, and Boston. Gerstein also appeared in solo recital at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Chamber Music in Napa Valley, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the Abu Dhabi Festival. 

Gerstein’s recent release on the Platoon label pairs music by Debussy with that of Armenian priest, musicologist, and composer Komitas, featuring collaborations with Thomas Adès, Ruzan Mantashyan, and Katia Skanavi. 

Born in 1979 in Voronezh, Russia, Gerstein attended one of the country’s special music schools for gifted children and taught himself to play jazz at home by listening to his parents’ record collection. Following a chance encounter with jazz legend Gary Burton in St. Petersburg when Gerstein was 14, he was invited as the youngest student to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. At the age of 16, Gerstein completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees at New York’s Manhattan School of Music, followed by further studies with Dmitri Bashkirov in Madrid and Ferenc Rados in Budapest. A long-time believer in the importance of teaching in the life of a musician, Gerstein is currently Professor of Piano at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Hochschule and on the faculty of Kronberg Academy. 

Gerstein was the sixth recipient of the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award and a First Prize winner at the 10th Arthur Rubinstein Competition, and is an Avery Fisher Career Grant holder. In May 2021, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

Founded in 2010 by Soundstreams Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney, Choir 21 is a pre-eminent group of exceptional singers selected by Music Director David Fallis. Soundstreams Choir 21 members are hand-picked for their ability to perform contemporary choral music. They are drawn from a pool of professional choristers that includes the Canadian Opera Company Chorus, Tafelmusik Choir, and the Elmer Iseler Singers.  

The choir appears in Soundstreams’ concerts under David Fallis and with renowned guest conductors such as James MacMillan, Tõnu Kaljuste, and Péter Eötvös. Choir 21 has performed for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s New Creations Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Art of Time Ensemble, and Continuum Contemporary Music, and presented a joint concert with Frieder Bernius’s Stuttgart Chamber Choir. Committed to keeping choral music alive, Choir 21 supports the ongoing evolution of this compelling and enduring medium into the 21st century.

Conductor David Fallis is one of Canada’s leading interpreters of operatic and choral/orchestral repertoire, known especially for his work in the Baroque and Classical periods, and contemporary music. He has conducted at the Royal Opera House in Versailles, the Glimmerglass Festival, the Singapore Festival, the Luminato Festival, Festival Vancouver, Houston Grand Opera, the Seoul Arts Center, Cleveland Opera, Wolf Trap Theater, and Utah Opera.

As Music Director for Opera Atelier, he has helped bring the company onto stages around the world, and for them Fallis has conducted all the major Mozart operas, all the Monteverdi operas, and works by Purcell, Handel, Rameau, Lully, Charpentier, and Weber. He led the company for all five of their triumphant appearances at the Royal Opera House in Versailles, and twice he led Opera Atelier on tour to Seoul, South Korea. 

On the symphonic stage, in 2019 Fallis made his début with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra conducting Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Fauré’s Requiem, and a World Première by Andrew Balfour, all with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. He has conducted the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Orchestra London, the Windsor Symphony, Symphony Nova Scotia, Symphony New Brunswick, and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. 

Fallis directs Soundstreams Choir 21. In 2019, for Soundstreams and Signal Theatre, he conducted Pimootewin by Melissa Hui and Tomson Highway, the world’s first opera in Cree, and Gállábártnit by Britta Byström and Rawdna Carita Eira, the world’s first opera in Sámi. He has conducted world premières by many other leading Canadian composers, including James Rolfe, Cecilia Livingston, Christos Hatzis, Andrew Balfour, and Andrew Ager.

Following his success in conducting the world premiere of R. Murray Schafer’s The Children’s Crusade at the 2009 Luminato Festival in Toronto, he was asked to conduct one of Schafer’s most ambitious works of music theatre, Apocalypsis, to great acclaim at the 2015 festival. 

From 2018 to 2020 he was Interim Conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, leading them throughout their 125th-anniversary  season. From 1990 to 2018 he was Artistic Director of the Toronto Consort, a renowned chamber group specializing in the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. 

Fallis has also worked in film and television. He led the Toronto Consort in music for Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter and was Historical Music Producer for Showtime’s acclaimed series The Tudors, featuring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Sam Neill, and Peter O’Toole, and The Borgias, starring Jeremy Irons.