22 November 2021
Busoni Composition Prize 2021 goes to Igor Santos
Sponsorship Prize awarded to Elias Jurgschat
Award ceremony and concert on 26 November 2021, 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz
The Busoni Composition Prize endowed with € 6,000 goes this year to the Brazilian composer Igor Santos, who lives in the USA. Elias Jurgschat is receiving the Sponsorship Prize worth €2,500. The award ceremony and concert will take place on Friday, 26 November 2021, at the Akademie der Künste at Pariser Platz. The laudatory speeches will be given by Akademie members Chaya Czernowin and Ludger Brümmer, who together with Johannes Kalitzke served on the prize jury. The Berlin ensemble LUX:NM will perform compositions by the two prize-winners and by the prize’s name-giver, Ferruccio Busoni.
The two chamber music works by Igor Santos selected for the concert show how the prize-winner creates correspondences with language, linguistic gesture and the human voice in technically accomplished music rich in tonal colour. Text fragments from Peter Handke’s Kaspar and the word “confined” as a metaphor for the restrictions of our COVID age are points of departure. Also featured is a world premiere composed for the occasion by the young composer Elias Jurgschat. The programme is rounded off by Elegies Nos. 1 and 6 for solo piano by Ferruccio Busoni from 1907.
Igor Santos, born in Curitiba, Brazil, currently lives in Chicago, USA. Not only does he write concert music, he is also the Technical Director of the Ensemble Dal Niente and composes for theatre productions in the USA and Europe. In 2021 he received the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has won prizes at the Luigi Nono International Chamber Music Competition and the Red Note New Music Festival Composition Competition. Santos’ music has been performed internationally by, among others, the Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Modern, Alarm Will Sound, Eighth Blackbird, POING, the American Composers Orchestra and the Florida Orchestra.
Elias Jurgschat, born in Solingen in 1995, studied composition under Manfred Trojahn at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf from 2015-2017. Since 2017/18 he has been continuing his studies at the Carl Maria von Weber College of Music in Dresden under Mark Andre and Manos Tsangaris. In 2018, he was selected as a participant in the Dresden Master Classes in composition. In 2019, he received one of the two composition prizes of the Vienna Alban Berg Stiftung and the Sponsorship Prize for Young Composers of the Sächsischer Musikbund.
The Busoni Composition Prize was instituted by Aribert Reimann in 1988 and is awarded every two to three years to young composers still unknown to the public. The most recent prize-winners were Hanna Eimermacher and Hovik Sardaryan (2019). The Akademie der Künste uses this award to promote young composers; it has also been awarded to composition students since 1992.
Programme
Welcome address
Ferruccio Busoni: Elegies, BV 249: No. 1 After the Turning (1907) for piano
Laudatory speeches (Chaya Czernowin and Ludger Brümmer)
Igor Santos: confined.speak (2020, German premiere) for violin and piano
Elias Jurgschat: New work (2021, world premiere) for trombone, cello, piano and percussion
Ferruccio Busoni: Elegies, BV 249: No. 6 Visitation (Nocturne) (1907) for piano
Igor Santos: speak through speaking (2017, German premiere) for saxophone, accordion and double bass
Performed by the ensemble LUX:NM. Guest: Beltane Ruiz Molina (double bass)
Event details
Busoni Composition Prize 2021 goes to Igor Santos (prize-winner)
Sponsorship Prize awarded to Elias Jurgschat
Award ceremony and concert
Friday, 26 November 2021, 7 pm, admission free
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Proof of vaccination or recovery from a COVID infection (“2G rule”) is required for admission to the award ceremony.
Press tickets available from presse@adk.de, tel. 030 200 57 1514