Thierry Tidrow is an award-winning Canadian composer of instrumental and vocal music, with a predilection for opera. His music has been described as “embracing many musical worlds, in which explorations of noise, expressionist lyricism, pastiche and parody form a discursive and richly detailed whole.” (ECM+ Generations Jury 2018) This audacious synthesis of styles gives rise to a chiaroscuro of meaning, often playful, but where the humourous can quickly turn to horrific or tragic and back. His studied approach to text and sound reveals hidden meanings and erects new ones, and his dramatic instinct leads to an intrinsically narrative mode of expression packed with surprise and intrigue.

Born in Ottawa in 1986, Thierry’s musical education began with choral and vocal music, followed by studies in composition, music theory and early music performance at McGill University (B. Mus. 2009). As a Fondation Ricard and Canada Arts Council Fellow, he received his Masters degree in composition from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2011 under Richard Ayres, followed by an Advanced Studies diploma at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in 2013, under Brice Pauset.

Thierry has collaborated with many performers across Europe and North America, including the Asko-Schönberg Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, the Bozzini String Quartet, Continuum, hand werk, Ensemble Proton, Sarah Maria Sun, Johannes Fischer, Brian Archinal, Heather Roche and many others. He has been featured at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Heidelberger Frühling, Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci, Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival, the Festival Radio-France de Montpellier, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, and the Zagreb Music Biennale.

Thierry has written several operas, including My Corporate Identity (2017, libretto by Uta Bierbaum) for the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Prothesen der Autonomie (2018, libretto by Franziska vom Heede) for the Neuköllner Oper (Berliner Opernpreis 2018), and Nils Karlsson Däumling (2019, libretto by Manfred Weiß based on Astrid Lindgren) for Deutsche Oper am Rhein. He is currently composer-in-residence at Oper Dortmund, for which he is currently working on several operatic projects.

Thierry has received many distinctions, including the 1st prize of the inaugural Graham Sommer Competition for his string quintet Quicksilver (2018), and the Canada Council for the Arts’ Governor General's award, the Jules-Léger Prize for Au fond du Cloître Humide (2014). From 2017 to 2019, he was a fellow of the Akademie Musiktheater Heute for young opera makers, had two artist residencies (Künstlerhaus Lauenburg, Künstlerhaus Lukas), and was part of the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal’s (ECM+) Generation 2018 tour.