Thomas Ades: Full of Noises - Conversations with Tom Service (Paperback)

A wide-ranging and highly opinionated conversation about the creative impulse, by a happening young composer
Composer, conductor, and pianist, Thomas Ades is widely considered the preeminent musical figure of his generation. His orchestral pieces, chamber music, and operas are performed throughout the world. He is also sought after as both a conductor and a pianist on the international concert stage. Yet Ades is secretive, especially about what lies behind his impulse to compose. The poetry, technique, and experiences that fuel the spectrum of his work--from his first opera, "Powder Her Face," ""to his masterpiece "The""Tempest"""and""his orchestral works "Asyla" and" Tevot"--have remained hidden and unexplained until now.
In intimate and spirited conversation with the distinguished music critic Tom Service, Ades reveals for the first time how he creates music, where it comes from, and what it means to compose. Ades connects his music with a broad range of influences--from Sephardic folk music to '80s electronica, and from the films of Luis Bunuel and pre-Columbian art to the soundtracks of al-Qaeda training videos. "Thomas Ades: Full of Noises" contains insights into the mind of the composer on virtually every page. There are also many opinions: the music of Wagner is "essentially fungal"; Mahler's work is "relentlessly banal"; Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra "is "like a bad joke." And yet there is a deeply affirmative quality about these conversations, which will delight readers interested in music and the creative process.