Andy Vores was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1956 and has lived in the United States since 1987. He studied composition at Lancaster University, England with Edward Cowie. After graduating he worked in London as a music copyist and as Lecturer in Composition at The City University. Many of his works received their premieres at this time from performers including Sarah Walker, Irvine Arditti, the London Sinfonietta, The Nash Ensemble, and the BBC Singers, including Humming Harvest Gone Snow Motor which later won first prize in the Kucyna International Composition Competition at Boston University.
In 1986 he was a Fellow in Composition at Tanglewood, studying with Oliver Knussen. Hammer and Darkness, Mirror and Knife, written that summer, was awarded the Tanglewood Prize for Composition. In 1988 he won the Scottish National Orchestra's Ian Whyte Award; a commission for a new work, Twistification. In 1990 Sinfonietta was premiered by the Omaha Symphony Chamber Orchestra as the prize-winning work in the Omaha Symphony Guild New Music Contest. The following year Twistification was chosen for a National Orchestral Association reading.
Commissions include Return to a Place for Sanford Sylvan and David Breitman, Wetherby Nocturne for Kathy Supové, Cleopatra for Dominique Labelle, Goback Goback for Collage New Music, Quartet No.3 for The Borromeo Quartet, World Wheel for The Cantata Singers, and Uncertainty Is Beautiful for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He has received awards from ASCAP, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, The Richmond International Festival of New Music, The American Music Center, and Museum in the Community.
His two-act comic opera Freshwater was commissioned by the Boston University Opera Institute and premiered in 1994 to critical success. His song In a Parlor Containing a Table has been performed frequently by Dawn Upshaw and Gil Kalish throughout the US and in Europe.
In 1999 he was appointed Composer-in-Residence to the FleetBoston Celebrity Series: Emerging Artists. Dark Mother for Triple Helix - his first commission for the series - was premiered in April 2000 and Urban Affair premiered by The Boston Trio the following year. He is currently Composer-in-Residence for the New England Philharmonic. Since 2001 he has taught at The Boston Conservatory where he is Chair of Composition, Theory, and Music History.