Press Release, February 2018

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Awards Composers’ Prizes to Clara Iannotta, Timothy McCormack and Oriol Saladrigues 3.2 million euros of funding for contemporary music projects worldwide

In 2018, the three Composers’ Prizes of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will go to the Berlin- based Italian composer Clara Iannotta, Timothy McCormack (USA) and the Catalan composer Orio Saladrigues. Each of these awards for promising young composers is endowed with 35,000 euros. In addition, the young artists will receive portrait CDs produced according to their personal wishes. In 2017, once again, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award over 3.5 million euros in prize money and grants. The largest share – 3.2 million euros – will go towards supporting contemporary music projects worldwide. This year’s Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, endowed with 250,000 euros, will be awarded to the Austrian-Swiss composer Beat Furrer.

Composers’ Prizes for Clara Iannotta, Timothy McCormack and Oriol Saladrigues The overused phrase ‘crossing boundaries’ is not a mere metaphor when it comes to the music of Clara Iannotta, born in Rome in 1983, but rather an accurate factual description. For a current work with the visual artist Anna Kubelík, she is exploring the connections between real and compositional space. Generally speaking, ‘space’ is one of the central concepts in the music of the Berlin-based Italian composer. Her compositions often resemble spaces that are gradually explored by the listener; texture and surface structure are more significant than seriality. Accordingly, the composer states that one of the happiest moments for her when composing is ‘when I succeed in physically reproducing the image of space and sound that was in my head’. Iannotta recounts that as a child, she often built her own toys; in this way she learned, in a playful way, to test existing components for their usability in other contexts. Today she often uses her array of instruments in seemingly counter-intuitive ways – imaginatively, and carried by experimental sensibility. Iannotta studied in Milan and Paris, at IRCAM, and at Harvard University, with Alessandro Solbiati, Frédéric Durieux and Chaya Czernowin. In recent years she has been commissioned to write for Quator Diotima, Ensemble intercontemporain, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Arditti Quartett (for the Festival d’Automne) and Ensemble Nikel. In 2013 she was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme. Iannotta has received numerous awards, including the Hindemith Prize (2018), the Berlin-Rheinsberg Composition Prize, the Stuttgart Composition Prize and a fellowship from the Schöppingen Artists’ Village Foundation. Since 2014 she has been artistic director of the festival Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik.

The music of the American composer Timothy McCormack, born in 1984, conveys itself to the listener primarily as a state of tension – as an interaction of organisms or a collision of matter. The piece KARST (2015/16), for example, makes explicit reference to geology: the title describes the contact between acidified water and rock. A further source of inspiration for McCormack is dance, and thus the interaction of humans with other humans. The title of his work you actually are evaporating (2011/12) comes from William Forsythe, whose work was a strong influence on the composer. McCormack studied modern dance with the former Forsythe dancer and assistant Jill Johnson. Forsythe only provides his dancers with a choreographic framework, and otherwise lets them interact freely. Studying dance taught McCormack ‘the exact opposite of what I studied for years’, says the composer. ‘It completely changed my musical agenda. In fact, it brought me closer to what I had always wanted to be as a composer.’ Correspondingly, McCormack’s scores are more instructions for actions than for exact sonic results. Timothy McCormack is a PhD student at Harvard, where he is studying with Chaya Czernowin. Before that, he studied at Huddersfield University with Aaron Cassidy and Liza Lim, and also with Lewis Nielson and Randolph Coleman at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. From 2014 to 2017 McCormack was director of Harvard’s Group for New Music. He received Harvard University’s George Arthur Knight Prize for his piece you actually are evaporating in 2014. Harvard University also awarded him the John Green Scholarship in 2017 for his ‘promising talent as a composer’. In addition, he won the composition competition of the international Impuls Academy, which led to a commission for .

Time, its perception, and communication in and through music are central elements in the work of Oriol Saladrigues, born in Barcelona in 1975. Many of the composer’s pieces are characterized by a scientific spirit of exploration; the fact that Saladrigues studied as a scientist – a chemical engineer – is palpable. He has not only transferred ‘the way of solving problems’ from natural science to his compositional work, but also feels that it enabled him to ‘understand the physics of sound better’. Nonetheless, his music is far from hermetic, but rather extremely communicative and open to other areas, and often speechlike – quite literally. Compositions such as Presse (2011) for seven voices, orchestra and live electronics operate with the pure sound of phonemes, but also go beyond this and clearly address the listener. Saladrigues studied composition with a variety of teachers including Josep Soler, Luis Naón, Horacio Vaggione, José Manuel López López, Yan Maresz, Michael Jarrell and Ivan Fedele. He has received support from numerous institutions, for example the Fundació La Caixa, Fundación Caja Madrid, Academia Española en Roma and Generalitat de Catalunya. Since 2013, Oriol has lived in Paris, where he teaches at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse. In 2012 he co-founded the Festival in Barcelona, and has been its artistic co-director ever since.

Portrait CDs Each Composers’ Prize is endowed with 35,ooo euros. In addition, the young artists will receive portrait CDs produced in close collaboration according to their own individual wishes. The discs, which are regularly recorded by outstanding soloists, major orchestras and renowned contemporary music ensembles, will be released in late 2018.

3.2 million euros for contemporary music projects worldwide In 2018, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will once again award a total of 3.5 million euros in prize money and grants. Roughly 3.2 million will go towards supporting 120 projects worldwide – from Colombia to Slovenia: in Bogotá, a commission for a new work by Juan Pablo Carreño will be supported, and in Ljubljana the Foundation will once again provide funds for the Slowind Festival. The largest part of the funds will finance and support commissions for new works by such composers as José María Sánchez-Verdú, Ulrich Alexander Kreppein, Toshio Hosokawa or Hans Thomalla. The EvS Music Foundation supports concerts on large and small stages, such as the MULTIVERSUM event at the Elbphilharmonie, which focuses this year on George Benjamin, a concert series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the London Sinfonietta, the Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, as well as concerts by the young Swiss vocal ensemble Cantando Admont. In addition, numerous festivals, academies and outreach projects will receive support. The next application deadline for project grants is 1 March 2018. Detailed information on all project grants and how to apply for them can be found on our homepage: www.evs-musikstiftung.ch

Award Ceremony on 3 May 2018 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich The three winners of this year’s Composers’ Prizes, as well as the winner of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, Beat Furrer, will be honoured at the Prinzregententheater in Munich on 3 May. Thomas Angyan, chairman of the advisory board and artistic director of the Vienna Society of Music Friends, will present the awards to the three composers at a musical ceremony. Klangforum Wien, conducted by Beat Furrer, will play Clara Iannotta’s troglodyte angels clank by, Timothy McCormack’s karst survey and a new work by Oriol Saladrigues composed for the award ceremony. The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, endowed with 250,000 euros, will be presented to Beat Furrer by Michael Krüger, president of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. Klangforum Wien will perform Furrer’s canti della tenebra. The laudatory speech for Beat Furrer will be given by Thomas Macho, director of the International Research Centre for Cultural Science, Vienna.

Detailed information and visual material: Imke List and Dr. Tanja Pröbstl| +49 / (0)89 / 6 36 -3 29 07 oder -3 29 47 | [email protected]