Andy Vores was born Wales and raised in England. He studied composition at Lancaster University with Edward Cowie. From 1982 he worked in London as Lecturer and Composer-in-Residence at The City University and as a music copyist for Universal Edition, Schotts, Novellos, and Faber Music. In 1986 he was a Fellow in Composition at Tanglewood, studying with Oliver Knussen.

He moved to Boston in 1989 where he was offered one of five three-year funded residencies with the composers' collective NuClassix. From 1993 to 1994 he was Communications Director of the American Composers Forum in St. Paul from, returning to Boston to teach composition at the Walnut Hill School for Performing Arts.

From 1999 to 2001 he was Composer-in-Residence to the BankBoston Celebrity Series, and from 2002 to 2005 Composer-in-Residence to the New England Philharmonic. In 2001 he was appointed as Chair of Composition, Theory, and Music History at The Boston Conservatory.

His music has been performed by the London Sinfonietta, the Boston Modern Orchestral Project, the New England Philharmonic, The Cantata Singers, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, the Scottish National Orchestra, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Omaha Symphony,
Boston Musica Viva, Collage New Music, the Borromeo String Quartet, Triple Helix, The Boston Trio, The Nash Ensemble, the BBC Singers, Irvine Arditti, Sarah Walker, Lynn Torgove, Dominique Labelle, Dawn Upshaw, Gilbert Kalish, Sanford Sylvan, Kendra Colton, Kathleen Supové, David Kravitz, Karol Bennett, and many others.

Commissions include Freshwater (The Boston University Opera Institute), Bulldancer (Boston Ballet), Head Down Legs Up (Welsh Arts Council), World Wheel (The Cantata Singers), Bubble (US Mexico Fund for Culture), String Quartet No.3 (Chamber Music America), The Bridge (the City of Boston for the opening of the Leonard P. Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge), Wetherby Nocturne (Barlow Endowment for Music), Uncertainty is Beautiful (BMOP), Goback Goback and Weegee (Collage New Music), and Forgot, Often, Vanishing Cream, and Umberhulk (Boston Musica Viva).

Awards and prizes include a Koussevitsky Fellowship, the Alea III International Composition Competition, the Ian Whyte Award, the Tanglewood Prize for Composition, the Omaha Symphony Guild New Music Festival, the Richmond International Festival, The National Orchestral Association, and the Huddersfield Festival. His music has been broadcast by in Europe and the US including Urban Affair, a CD of his chamber music.

Besides concert works, he collaborates with artists working in different disciplines including electronic scores for three video installations with Jessie Shefrin, seen at galleries in Beijing and Buffalo. Recent performances include Umberhulk at Summergarden MoMA (New Juilliard Ensemble), What I Can't Kick at the Bar Harbor Festival (New Piano Quartet), No Exit (Guerilla Opera) Two Fabrications at the Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music (BMOP), Leif (Boston Musica Viva) Objects and Intervals (Brave New Works), Natural Selection (The Cantata Singers), and Fabrication 17: Stunt (The Zodiac Trio).