Belmont Prize 2024
for Contemporary Music
Prizewinner
Mirela Ivičević
Composer from Vienna
cargocollective.com/mirelaivicevic
25 February 2025. The Forberg-Schneider Foundation is awarding the Belmont Prize for Contemporary Music to the composer Mirela Ivičević. For the first time, the prize is endowed with € 25,000 (previously € 20,000). The award ceremony will take place on 22 May 2025 at 18:30 in the “Gartensaal” of the Prinzregententheater in Munich.
“Mirela Ivičević writes music full of power and wit”, explains the board in justifying their decision, adding:
“With impulsive yet playful gestures, Mirela Ivičević arranges elaborately crafted instrumental and electronic sounds to reveal a palette where finely wrought everyday noises interweave. The composer from Split, Croatia, calls her globally resonant aural narratives ‚Sonic Fictions’. The stark contrasts in her works point to a decidedly confrontational interplay between disparate layers of time and meaning. Ivičević’s keen sensibility for harnessing the creative impetus of these tensions reveals what an engaged and resolutely politically minded artist she is.“
Mirela Ivičević comments on the accolade: „The award came as a complete surprise! I am still in awe of being included among such a distinguished group of prize recipients. It is truly an honor!“
Mirela Ivičević, born in 1980 in Split, Croatia, and now based in Vienna, Austria, has an oeuvre spanning chamber music and orchestral works, electroacoustic and multimedia pieces, as well as theater and film music. Her compositions have been performed at international festivals and have been interpreted by renowned ensembles such as Klangforum Wien and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. She also maintains a close collaboration with the Black Page Orchestra, an experimental collective she co-founded in 2014.
Her early musical instruction began in childhood with the piano. Later she studied composition and music theory with Željko Brkanović, media composition and applied music with Klaus-Peter Sattler, and composition with Beat Furrer. In addition to composing, she works as a performer and as a curator.
You can download the press release here.
